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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

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.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Country Feeling Government Men Support
It is easier for the world to accept a simple lie than a complex truth.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Easy Lying Simplicity Truth World
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.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Government Help Ideas Lose Need Place
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
I have only one passion, the love of liberty and human dignity.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Dignity Human Liberty Love Passion
Nothing is so dangerous as that of violence employed by well-meaning people for beneficial objects.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Dangerous Employment People Violence
A democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Escape Government Oneself Politics
I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Country Freedom Independence Mindset Myself Reality
Every central government worships uniformity: uniformity relieves it from inquiry into an infinity of details.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Detail Government Liberty relief
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
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.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Human Intellectual Logic Oneself Ordinary Peace Principles Weakness
The best laws cannot make a constitution work in spite of morals; morals can turn the worst laws to advantage.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Best Law Moral Worst
Society is endangered not by the great profligacy of a few, but by the laxity of morals amongst all.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Greatness Moral
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.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Evil Freedom Goodness Love Myself Nature
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
I should have loved freedom, I believe, at all times, but in the time in which we live I am ready to worship it.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Believe Freedom Liberty Live Love Myself Time