A man’s admiration of absolute government is proportionate to the contempt he feels for those around him.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLEA man’s admiration of absolute government is proportionate to the contempt he feels for those around him.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLEThe health of a democratic society may be measured by the quality of functions performed by private citizens.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLESocialism is a new form of slavery.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLEIn the principle of equality I very clearly discern two tendencies; one leading the mind of every man to untried thoughts, the other prohibiting him from thinking at all.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLEMen 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 TOCQUEVILLEThere is hardly a political question in the United States which does not sooner or later turn into a judicial one.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLEChristianity is the companion of liberty in all its conflicts, the cradle of its infancy, and the divine source of its claims.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLEIf 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.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLEAmerica is a country where they have freedom of speech but everyone says the same thing.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLEThere is no country in the world in which everything can be provided for by the laws, or in which political institutions can prove a substitute for common sense and public morality.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLEAs the past has ceased to throw its light upon the future, the mind of man wanders in obscurity.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLENothing is so dangerous as that of violence employed by well-meaning people for beneficial objects.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLERulers 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 TOCQUEVILLEAs 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 TOCQUEVILLEAmerica is great because she is good.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLEI 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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