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.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLEThe 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.
More Alexis de Tocqueville Quotes
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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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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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It is easier for the world to accept a simple lie than a complex truth.
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One of the most ordinary weaknesses of the human intellect is to seek to reconcile contrary principles, and to purchase peace at the expense of logic.
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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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Righteous women in their circle of influence, beginning in the home, can turn the world around.
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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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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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Every central government worships uniformity: uniformity relieves it from inquiry into an infinity of details.
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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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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.
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Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith.
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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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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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Those who prize freedom only for the material benefits it offers have never kept it for long.
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When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness.
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Life is to be entered upon with courage.
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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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I have only one passion, the love of liberty and human dignity.
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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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The most dangerous moment for a bad government is when it begins to reform.
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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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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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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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There are many men of principle in both parties in America, but there is no party of principle.
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Socialism is a new form of slavery.
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