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 TOCQUEVILLEI 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.
More Alexis de Tocqueville Quotes
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The man who asks of freedom anything other than itself is born to be a slave.
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Every central government worships uniformity: uniformity relieves it from inquiry into an infinity of details.
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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 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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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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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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The last thing a political party gives up is its vocabulary.
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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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The best laws cannot make a constitution work in spite of morals; morals can turn the worst laws to advantage.
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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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To remain silent is the most useful service that a mediocre speaker can render to the public good.
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Men will not receive the truth from their enemies, and it is seldom offered to them by their friends.
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I have only one passion, the love of liberty and human dignity.
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The tie of language is perhaps the strongest and the most durable that can unite mankind.
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The most dangerous moment for a bad government is when it begins to reform.
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