Any measure that establishes legal charity on a permanent basis and gives it an administrative form thereby creates an idle and lazy class, living at the expense of the industrial and working class.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLEThere is no country in the world in which everything can be provided for by the laws, or in which political institutions can prove a substitute for common sense and public morality.
More Alexis de Tocqueville Quotes
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I cannot help fearing that men may reach a point where they look on every new theory as a danger, every innovation as a toilsome trouble, every social advance as a first step toward revolution, and that they may absolutely refuse to move at all.
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There are many men of principle in both parties in America, but there is no party of principle.
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America is great because she is good.
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History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.
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There is no country in the world in which everything can be provided for by the laws, or in which political institutions can prove a substitute for common sense and public morality.
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Society is endangered not by the great profligacy of a few, but by the laxity of morals amongst all.
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If I were asked to what the singular prosperity and growing strength of Americans ought mainly to be attributed, I should reply: To the superiority of their women.
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Everybody feels the evil, but no one has courage or energy enough to seek the cure.
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Nothing is so dangerous as that of violence employed by well-meaning people for beneficial objects.
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If an American was condemned to confine his activity to his own affairs, he would be robbed of one half of his existence.
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Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith.
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I should have loved freedom, I believe, at all times, but in the time in which we live I am ready to worship it.
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The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.
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The health of a democratic society may be measured by the quality of functions performed by private citizens.
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Every central government worships uniformity: uniformity relieves it from inquiry into an infinity of details.
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America is a country where they have freedom of speech but everyone says the same thing.
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When a large number of organs of the press come to advance along the same track, their influence becomes almost irresistible in the long term, and public opinion, struck always from the same side, ends by yielding under their blows.
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If ever America undergoes great revolutions, they will be brought about by the presence of the black race on the soil of the United States – that is to say, they will owe their origin not to the equality but to the inequality of conditions.
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I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America.
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There is hardly a political question in the United States which does not sooner or later turn into a judicial one.
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Socialism is a new form of slavery.
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This so-called tolerance, which, in my opinion, is nothing but a huge indifference.
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When I refuse to obey an unjust law, I do not contest the right of the majority to command, but I simply appeal from the sovereignty of the people to the sovereignty of mankind.
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Equality is a slogan based on envy. It signifies in the heart of every republican: “Nobody is going to occupy a place higher than I.”
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In politics shared hatreds are almost always the basis of friendships.
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As the past has ceased to throw its light upon the future, the mind of man wanders in obscurity.
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