Everybody feels the evil, but no one has courage or energy enough to seek the cure.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLEAs 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?
More Alexis de Tocqueville Quotes
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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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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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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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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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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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Society is endangered not by the great profligacy of a few, but by the laxity of morals amongst all.
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Righteous women in their circle of influence, beginning in the home, can turn the world around.
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Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith.
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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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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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The last thing a political party gives up is its vocabulary.
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There is no country in the world where the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America.
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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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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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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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The health of a democratic society may be measured by the quality of functions performed by private citizens.
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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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A man’s admiration of absolute government is proportionate to the contempt he feels for those around him.
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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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Life is to be entered upon with courage.
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Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.
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In politics shared hatreds are almost always the basis of friendships.
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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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To remain silent is the most useful service that a mediocre speaker can render to the public good.
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The man who asks of freedom anything other than itself is born to be a slave.
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