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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?

Alexis de Tocqueville

Men will not receive the truth from their enemies, and it is seldom offered to them by their friends.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Enemy Friendship Men Truth
America is a country where they have freedom of speech but everyone says the same thing.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Country Freedom Talk
Everybody feels the evil, but no one has courage or energy enough to seek the cure.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Courage Energy Enough Evil Feeling
Society is endangered not by the great profligacy of a few, but by the laxity of morals amongst all.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Greatness Moral
The best laws cannot make a constitution work in spite of morals; morals can turn the worst laws to advantage.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Best Law Moral Worst
Those who prize freedom only for the material benefits it offers have never kept it for long.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Freedom Loss Material Reward
Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Establishment Faith Liberty Moral
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.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Citizenship Equality Escape Himself Pride Try
The health of a democratic society may be measured by the quality of functions performed by private citizens.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Citizenship Democracy Health Performance Quality Wisdom
As the past has ceased to throw its light upon the future, the mind of man wanders in obscurity.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Future Light Men Mindset Past
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.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Government Improvement Moments Oppression Seek
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.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Government Help Ideas Lose Need Place
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.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Dangerous Fear Man Myself Revolution Theory
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.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Impossible Liberty Mindset Oneself Religion
Christianity is the companion of liberty in all its conflicts, the cradle of its infancy, and the divine source of its claims.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Divine Liberty
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.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Human Intellectual Logic Oneself Ordinary Peace Principles Weakness