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 TOCQUEVILLEA democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it.
More Alexis de Tocqueville Quotes
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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.
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Life is to be entered upon with courage.
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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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Those who prize freedom only for the material benefits it offers have never kept it for long.
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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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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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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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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?
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America is great because she is good.
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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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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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One of the happiest consequences of the absence of government is the development of individual strength that inevitably follows.
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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 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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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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