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.
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.
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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History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.
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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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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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As the past has ceased to throw its light upon the future, the mind of man wanders in obscurity.
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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 are many men of principle in both parties in America, but there is no party of principle.
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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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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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Those which we call necessary institutions are simply no more than institutions to which we have become accustomed.
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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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Equality is a slogan based on envy. It signifies in the heart of every republican: “Nobody is going to occupy a place higher than I.”
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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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I 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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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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If an American was condemned to confine his activity to his own affairs, he would be robbed of one half of his existence.
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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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I have only one passion, the love of liberty and human dignity.
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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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Socialism is a new form of slavery.
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In politics shared hatreds are almost always the basis of friendships.
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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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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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One of the happiest consequences of the absence of government is the development of individual strength that inevitably follows.
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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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