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 TOCQUEVILLEThe 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.
More Alexis de Tocqueville Quotes
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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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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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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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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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America is a country where they have freedom of speech but everyone says the same thing.
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The tie of language is perhaps the strongest and the most durable that can unite mankind.
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Nothing is so dangerous as that of violence employed by well-meaning people for beneficial objects.
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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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America is great because she is good.
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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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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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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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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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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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Righteous women in their circle of influence, beginning in the home, can turn the world around.
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