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Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith.

Alexis de Tocqueville

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.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Government Help Ideas Lose Need Place
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.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Government Improvement Moments Oppression Seek
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.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Authority Beginning Freedom Illusion Men Moral Power Rule Try
I vow that I do not hold that complete and instantaneous love for the freedom of the press that one accords to things whose nature is unqualifiedly good. I love it out of consideration for the evils it prevents much more than for the good it does.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Evil Freedom Goodness Love Myself Nature
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.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Country Institution Law Moral World
However 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.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Citizenship Equality Escape Himself Pride Try
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.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Faith Goodness Keys Myself Sacrifice Support
Society is endangered not by the great profligacy of a few, but by the laxity of morals amongst all.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Greatness Moral
America is a country where they have freedom of speech but everyone says the same thing.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Country Freedom Talk
There is no country in the world where the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Country Greatness Man Religious Soul World
America is great because she is good.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Goodness Greatness Herself Patriot
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.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Break Democracy Old Politics See Time
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.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Independent Necessary Opinion Politics relief
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.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

End Media News Opinion Politics
I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Country Freedom Independence Mindset Myself Reality
Those who prize freedom only for the material benefits it offers have never kept it for long.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Freedom Loss Material Reward
The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Corruption Discovery Endurance Government Money
There is hardly a political question in the United States which does not sooner or later turn into a judicial one.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Country Motivational Politics
I cannot help fearing that men may reach a point where they look on every new theory as a danger, every innovation as a toilsome trouble, every social advance as a first step toward revolution, and that they may absolutely refuse to move at all.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Dangerous Fear Man Myself Revolution Theory
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.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Impossible Liberty Mindset Oneself Religion
The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Ability Greatness Herself Lying Nation
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.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Charity Creation Establishment Live
The man who asks of freedom anything other than itself is born to be a slave.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Born Freedom Liberty Men Slave
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.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Human Intellectual Logic Oneself Ordinary Peace Principles Weakness
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 TOCQUEVILLE

Greatness Ideas Mind Nation Power Simplicity True
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.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Country Feeling Government Men Support
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.
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

Justice Kind Law Man Myself People Right Simplicity