A man’s admiration of absolute government is proportionate to the contempt he feels for those around him.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLEHowever energetically society in general may strive to make all the citizens equal and alike, the personal pride of each individual will always make him try to escape from the common level, and he will form some inequality somewhere to his own profit.
More Alexis de Tocqueville Quotes
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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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The man who asks of freedom anything other than itself is born to be a slave.
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When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness.
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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.
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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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The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.
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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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Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.
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The Americans combine the notions of religion and liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive of one without the other.
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Men will not receive the truth from their enemies, and it is seldom offered to them by their friends.
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In the United States, the majority undertakes to supply a multitude of ready-made opinions for the use of individuals, who are thus relieved from the necessity of forming opinions of their own.
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Every central government worships uniformity: uniformity relieves it from inquiry into an infinity of details.
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The more government takes the place of associations, the more will individuals lose the idea of forming associations and need the government to come to their help. That is a vicious circle of cause and effect.
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America is great because she is good.
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The tie of language is perhaps the strongest and the most durable that can unite mankind.
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Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith.
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One of the happiest consequences of the absence of government is the development of individual strength that inevitably follows.
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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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Men are not corrupted by the exercise of power or debased by the habit of obedience, but by the exercise of a power which they believe to be illegal and by obedience to a rule which they consider to be usurped and oppressive.
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Nothing is more wonderful than the art of being free, but nothing is harder to learn how to use than freedom.
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However energetically society in general may strive to make all the citizens equal and alike, the personal pride of each individual will always make him try to escape from the common level, and he will form some inequality somewhere to his own profit.
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I have only one passion, the love of liberty and human dignity.
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I vow that I do not hold that complete and instantaneous love for the freedom of the press that one accords to things whose nature is unqualifiedly good. I love it out of consideration for the evils it prevents much more than for the good it does.
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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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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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Righteous women in their circle of influence, beginning in the home, can turn the world around.
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