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Nothing is so dangerous as that of violence employed by well-meaning people for beneficial objects.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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Alexis de Tocqueville
Age: 53 †
Born: 1805
Born: July 29
Died: 1859
Died: April 16
Historian
Jurist
Philosopher
Politician
Sociologist
Writer
Paris
France
Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville
Tocqueville
Alexis-Charles-Henri Clerel de Tocqueville
Well
Nothing
Beneficial
People
Employed
Meaning
Objects
Dangerous
Violence
Wells
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When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness.
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To get the inestimable good that freedom of the press assures one must know how to submit to the inevitable evil it gives rise to.
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Religion, which never intervenes directly in the government of American society, should therefore be considered as the first of their political institutions
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I know of no other country where love of money has such a grip on men's hearts or where stronger scorn is expressed for the theory of permanent equality of property
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Nations are less disposed to make revolutions in proportion as personal property is augmented and distributed among them, and as the number of those possessing it is increased.
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The nations of our time cannot prevent the conditions of men from becoming equal, but it depends upon themselves whether the principle of equality is to lead them to servitude or freedom, to knowledge or barbarism, to prosperity or wretchedness.
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I have always noticed in politics how often men are ruined by having too good a memory.
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In democratic countries as well as elsewhere most of the branches of productive industry are carried on at a small cost by men little removed by their wealth or education above the level of those whom they employ.
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The most dangerous moment for a bad government is when it begins to reform.
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The last thing a political party gives up is its vocabulary.
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The man who submits to violence is debased by his compliance but when he submits to that right of authority which he acknowledges in a fellow creature, he rises in some measure above the person who give the command.
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The best laws cannot make a constitution work in spite of morals morals can turn the worst laws to advantage.
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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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The main business of religions is to purify, control, and restrain that excessive and exclusive taste for well-being which men acquire in times of equality.
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Men cannot abandon their religious faith without a kind of aberration of intellect and a sort of violent distortion of their true nature they are invincibly brought back to more pious sentiments. Unbelief is an accident, and faith is the only permanent state of mankind.
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You need not value it yourself if you do not wish to but you ought to allow it to us who do value it.
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Town meetings are to liberty what primary schools are to science they bring it within the people's reach.
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The progress of democracy seems irresistible, because it is the most uniform, the most ancient and the most permanent tendency which is to be found in history.
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The French under the old monarchy held it for a maxim that the king could do no wrong . The Americans entertain the same opinion with respect to the majority.... If ever the free institutions of America are destroyed, that event may be attributed to the omnipotence of the majority.
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There are many men of principle in both parties in America, but there is no party of principle.
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