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 TOCQUEVILLEDespotism often presents itself as the repairer of all the ills suffered, the support of just rights, defender of the oppressed, and founder of order.
More Alexis de Tocqueville Quotes
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Righteous women in their circle of influence, beginning in the home, can turn the world around.
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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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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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The man who asks of freedom anything other than itself is born to be a slave.
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When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness.
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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.
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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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In the United States, the majority undertakes to supply a multitude of ready-made opinions for the use of individuals, who are thus relieved from the necessity of forming opinions of their own.
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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 most dangerous moment for a bad government is when it begins to reform.
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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 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.
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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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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.
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Every central government worships uniformity: uniformity relieves it from inquiry into an infinity of details.
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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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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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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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History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.
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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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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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Men will not receive the truth from their enemies, and it is seldom offered to them by their friends.
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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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If ever America undergoes great revolutions, they will be brought about by the presence of the black race on the soil of the United States – that is to say, they will owe their origin not to the equality but to the inequality of conditions.
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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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