Socialism is a new form of slavery.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLEThose who prize freedom only for the material benefits it offers have never kept it for long.
More Alexis de Tocqueville Quotes
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The most dangerous moment for a bad government is when it begins to reform.
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History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.
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Everybody feels the evil, but no one has courage or energy enough to seek the cure.
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When I refuse to obey an unjust law, I do not contest the right of the majority to command, but I simply appeal from the sovereignty of the people to the sovereignty of mankind.
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The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.
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If 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.
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There is hardly a political question in the United States which does not sooner or later turn into a judicial one.
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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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When a large number of organs of the press come to advance along the same track, their influence becomes almost irresistible in the long term, and public opinion, struck always from the same side, ends by yielding under their blows.
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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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Nothing is so dangerous as that of violence employed by well-meaning people for beneficial objects.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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As 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?
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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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America is a country where they have freedom of speech but everyone says the same thing.
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The last thing a political party gives up is its vocabulary.
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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.
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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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A man’s admiration of absolute government is proportionate to the contempt he feels for those around him.
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Rulers 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.
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A democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it.
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There are many men of principle in both parties in America, but there is no party of principle.
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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.
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The health of a democratic society may be measured by the quality of functions performed by private citizens.
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