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To remain silent is the most useful service that a mediocre speaker can render to the public good.

Alexis de Tocqueville

Slavery…dishonors labor. It introduces idleness into society, and with idleness, ignorance and pride, luxury and distress. It enervates the powers of the mind and benumbs the activity of man.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Ignorance Luxury Men Mindset Power Pride Slave
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.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Authority Beginning Freedom Illusion Men Moral Power Rule Try
There is hardly a political question in the United States which does not sooner or later turn into a judicial one.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Country Motivational Politics
A man’s admiration of absolute government is proportionate to the contempt he feels for those around him.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Company Feeling Government Himself Men
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.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Believe Exercise Illegal Men Oppression Power Rule
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.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Justice Kind Law Man Myself People Right Simplicity
Every central government worships uniformity: uniformity relieves it from inquiry into an infinity of details.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Detail Government Liberty relief
The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Ability Greatness Herself Lying Nation
Nothing is so dangerous as that of violence employed by well-meaning people for beneficial objects.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Dangerous Employment People Violence
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.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Citizenship Equality Escape Himself Pride Try
Christianity is the companion of liberty in all its conflicts, the cradle of its infancy, and the divine source of its claims.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Divine Liberty
As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: how much money will it bring in?
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Character Money Nation See Value
The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democratic paint, but from time to time one can see the old aristocratic colours breaking through.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Break Democracy Old Politics See Time
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 TOCQUEVILLE

Oppression Order Present Suffering Support
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.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Democracy Myself Philosophy Politics Slave Togetherness
Men will not receive the truth from their enemies, and it is seldom offered to them by their friends.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Enemy Friendship Men Truth