Despotism often presents itself as the repairer of all the ills suffered, the support of just rights, defender of the oppressed, and founder of order.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLEWhen the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness.
More Alexis de Tocqueville Quotes
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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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There are many men of principle in both parties in America, but there is no party of principle.
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A man’s admiration of absolute government is proportionate to the contempt he feels for those around him.
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The most dangerous moment for a bad government is when it begins to reform.
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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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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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The man who asks of freedom anything other than itself is born to be a slave.
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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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Rulers who destroy men’s freedom commonly begin by trying to retain its forms. … They cherish the illusion that they can combine the prerogatives of absolute power with the moral authority that comes from popular assent.
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Christianity is the companion of liberty in all its conflicts, the cradle of its infancy, and the divine source of its claims.
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I have only one passion, the love of liberty and human dignity.
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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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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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This so-called tolerance, which, in my opinion, is nothing but a huge indifference.
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Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.
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Those which we call necessary institutions are simply no more than institutions to which we have become accustomed.
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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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The most perilous moment for a bad government is when it seeks to mend its ways. Only consummate statecraft can enable a king to save his throne when, after a long spell of oppression, he sets out to improve the lot of his subjects.
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Every central government worships uniformity: uniformity relieves it from inquiry into an infinity of details.
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As for me, I am deeply a democrat; this is why I am in no way a socialist. Democracy and socialism cannot go together. You can’t have it both ways. Socialism is a new form of slavery.
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All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and shortest means to accomplish it.
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The tie of language is perhaps the strongest and the most durable that can unite mankind.
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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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History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.
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Righteous women in their circle of influence, beginning in the home, can turn the world around.
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We can state with conviction, therefore, that a man’s support for absolute government is in direct proportion to the contempt he feels for his country.
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