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 TOCQUEVILLEThose which we call necessary institutions are simply no more than institutions to which we have become accustomed.
More Alexis de Tocqueville Quotes
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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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It is easier for the world to accept a simple lie than a complex truth.
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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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I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America.
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In politics shared hatreds are almost always the basis of friendships.
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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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Christianity is the companion of liberty in all its conflicts, the cradle of its infancy, and the divine source of its claims.
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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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America is great because she is good.
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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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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.
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The man who asks of freedom anything other than itself is born to be a slave.
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Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.
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I have only one passion, the love of liberty and human dignity.
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As for me, I am deeply a democrat; this is why I am in no way a socialist. Democracy and socialism cannot go together. You can’t have it both ways. Socialism is a new form of slavery.
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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.
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Life is to be entered upon with courage.
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Righteous women in their circle of influence, beginning in the home, can turn the world around.
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In 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.
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Everybody feels the evil, but no one has courage or energy enough to seek the cure.
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The tie of language is perhaps the strongest and the most durable that can unite mankind.
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I have seen Americans making great and sincere sacrifices for the key common good and a hundred times I have noticed that, when needs be, they almost always gave each other faithful support.
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When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness.
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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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However energetically society in general may strive to make all the citizens equal and alike, the personal pride of each individual will always make him try to escape from the common level, and he will form some inequality somewhere to his own profit.
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This so-called tolerance, which, in my opinion, is nothing but a huge indifference.
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