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.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLEThere 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.
More Alexis de Tocqueville Quotes
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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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History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.
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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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I have only one passion, the love of liberty and human dignity.
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In politics shared hatreds are almost always the basis of friendships.
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The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.
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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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The last thing a political party gives up is its vocabulary.
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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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The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.
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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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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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The man who asks of freedom anything other than itself is born to be a slave.
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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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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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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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The health of a democratic society may be measured by the quality of functions performed by private citizens.
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Those who prize freedom only for the material benefits it offers have never kept it for long.
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When I refuse to obey an unjust law, I do not contest the right of the majority to command, but I simply appeal from the sovereignty of the people to the sovereignty of mankind.
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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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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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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 best laws cannot make a constitution work in spite of morals; morals can turn the worst laws to advantage.
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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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America is great because she is good.
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