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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.

Alexis de Tocqueville

Every central government worships uniformity: uniformity relieves it from inquiry into an infinity of details.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Detail Government Liberty relief
Nothing is so dangerous as that of violence employed by well-meaning people for beneficial objects.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Dangerous Employment People Violence
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
As the past has ceased to throw its light upon the future, the mind of man wanders in obscurity.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Future Light Men Mindset Past
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.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Government Improvement Moments Oppression Seek
All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and shortest means to accomplish it.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Accomplishment Democracy Destroy Nation Peace Seek War
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
Generally speaking, only simple conceptions can grip the mind of a nation. An idea that is clear and precise even though false will always have greater power in the world than an idea that is true but complex.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Greatness Ideas Mind Nation Power Simplicity True
There 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 TOCQUEVILLE

Country Institution Law Moral World
Those who prize freedom only for the material benefits it offers have never kept it for long.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Freedom Loss Material Reward
In politics shared hatreds are almost always the basis of friendships.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Friendship Hate Politics
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.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Impossible Liberty Mindset Oneself Religion
I do not know if the people of the United States would vote for superior men if they ran for office, but there can be no doubt that such men do not run.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Doubt Man Myself People Vote
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.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Charity Creation Establishment Live
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
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