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.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLEHowever 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.
More Alexis de Tocqueville Quotes
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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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To remain silent is the most useful service that a mediocre speaker can render to the public good.
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Christianity is the companion of liberty in all its conflicts, the cradle of its infancy, and the divine source of its claims.
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This so-called tolerance, which, in my opinion, is nothing but a huge indifference.
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There 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.
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We can state with conviction, therefore, that a man’s support for absolute government is in direct proportion to the contempt he feels for his country.
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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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The tie of language is perhaps the strongest and the most durable that can unite mankind.
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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 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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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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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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Despotism often presents itself as the repairer of all the ills suffered, the support of just rights, defender of the oppressed, and founder of order.
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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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