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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
Violence
Wells
Well
Nothing
Beneficial
People
Employed
Meaning
Objects
Dangerous

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The territorial aristocracy of former ages was either bound by law, or thought itself bound by usage, to come to the relief of its serving-men and to relieve their distresses. But the manufacturing aristocracy of our age first impoverishes and debases the men who serve it and then abandons them to be supported by the charity of the public.
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The principle of equality does not destroy the imagination, but lowers its flight to the level of the earth.
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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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The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.
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Nations, as well as man, almost always betray the most prominent features of their future destiny in their earliest years.
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The last thing abandoned by a party is its phraseology, because among political parties, as elsewhere, the vulgar make the language, and the vulgar abandon more easily the ideas that have been instilled into it than the words that it has learnt.
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Men seldom take the opinion of their equal, or of a man like themselves, upon trust.
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General ideas are no proof of the strength, but rather of the insufficiency of the human intellect.
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If I were asked ... to what the singular prosperity and growing strength of Americans ought mainly to be attributed, I should reply: To the superiority of their women.
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European Christianity has allowed itself to be intimately united with the powers of this world. Now that these powers are falling, it is as if it were buried under their ruins.
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Despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot. How is it possible that society should escape destruction if the moral tie is not strengthened in proportion as the political tie is relaxed? And what can be done with a people who are their own masters if they are not submissive to the Deity?
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No protracted war can fail to endanger the freedom of a democratic country.
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The regime which is destroyed by a revolution is almost always an improvement on its immediate predecessor, and experience teaches that the most critical moment for bad governments is the one which witnesses their first steps toward reform.
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