There are many men of principle in both parties in America, but there is no party of principle.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLEA man’s admiration of absolute government is proportionate to the contempt he feels for those around him.
More Alexis de Tocqueville Quotes
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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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Those which we call necessary institutions are simply no more than institutions to which we have become accustomed.
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Every central government worships uniformity: uniformity relieves it from inquiry into an infinity of details.
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The last thing a political party gives up is its vocabulary.
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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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This so-called tolerance, which, in my opinion, is nothing but a huge indifference.
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Righteous women in their circle of influence, beginning in the home, can turn the world around.
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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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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.
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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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The tie of language is perhaps the strongest and the most durable that can unite 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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Nothing is so dangerous as that of violence employed by well-meaning people for beneficial objects.
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In politics shared hatreds are almost always the basis of friendships.
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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 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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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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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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America is a country where they have freedom of speech but everyone says the same thing.
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Life is to be entered upon with courage.
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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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Those who prize freedom only for the material benefits it offers have never kept it for long.
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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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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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It is easier for the world to accept a simple lie than a complex truth.
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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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