A man’s admiration of absolute government is proportionate to the contempt he feels for those around him.
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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History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.
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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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A democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it.
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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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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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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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America is great because she is good.
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This so-called tolerance, which, in my opinion, is nothing but a huge indifference.
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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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The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democratic paint, but from time to time one can see the old aristocratic colours breaking through.
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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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Equality is a slogan based on envy. It signifies in the heart of every republican: “Nobody is going to occupy a place higher than I.”
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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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Everybody feels the evil, but no one has courage or energy enough to seek the cure.
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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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