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[Liberty] considers religion as the safeguard of morality, and morality as the best security of law and the surest pledge of the duration of freedom.

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
Law
Considers
Freedom
Surest
Religion
Duration
Best
Pledge
Morality
Security
Virtue
Liberty
Safeguard

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You may be sure that if you succeed in bringing your audience into the presence of something that affects them, they will not care by what road you brought them there and they will never reproach you for having excited their emotions in spite of dramatic rules.
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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 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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I do not know if the people of the United States would vote for superior men if they ran for office, but there can be no doubt that such men do not run.
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The prejudice of the race appears stronger in the States that have abolished slaves than in the States where slavery still exists. White carpenters, white bricklayers, and white painters will not work side by side with the blacks in the North but do it in almost every Southern State.
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When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness.
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Socialism is a new form of slavery.
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I have only one passion, the love of liberty and human dignity.
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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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The happy and powerful do not go into exile, and there are no surer guarantees of equality among men than poverty and misfortune.
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The genius of democracies is seen not only in the great number of new words introduced but even more in the new ideas they express.
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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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The public, therefore, among a democratic people, has a singular power, which aristocratic nations cannot conceive for it does not persuade others to its beliefs, but it imposes them and makes them permeate the thinking of everyone by a sort of enormous pressure of the mind of all upon the individual intelligence.
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The most dangerous moment for a bad government is when it begins to reform.
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Not only does democracy make every man forget his ancestors, but also clouds their view of their descendants and isolates them from their contemporaries. Each man is for ever thrown back on himself alone, and there is danger that he may be shut up in the solitude of his own heart.
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I am unaware of his plans but I shall never stop believing in them because I cannot fathom them and I prefer to mistrust my own intellectual capacities than his justice.
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I see no clear reason why the doctrine of self-interest properly understood should turn men away from religious beliefs.
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It is an axiom of political science in the United States that the sole means of neutralizing the effects of newspapers is to multiply their number.
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It must not be forgotten that it is especially dangerous to enslave men in the minor details of life.
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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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