Every central government worships uniformity: uniformity relieves it from inquiry into an infinity of details.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLEAny 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.
More Alexis de Tocqueville Quotes
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America is great because she is good.
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Socialism is a new form of slavery.
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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 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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As the past has ceased to throw its light upon the future, the mind of man wanders in obscurity.
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Everybody feels the evil, but no one has courage or energy enough to seek the cure.
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Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith.
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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.
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This so-called tolerance, which, in my opinion, is nothing but a huge indifference.
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Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.
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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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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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Those which we call necessary institutions are simply no more than institutions to which we have become accustomed.
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I have only one passion, the love of liberty and human dignity.
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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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