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I avow 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

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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
Nature
Consideration
Doe
Presses
Much
Press
Avow
Good
Complete
Accords
Things
Whose
Instantaneous
Love
Hold
Prevents
Freedom
Accord
Evil
Evils

More quotes by Alexis de Tocqueville

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The more alike men are, the weaker each feels in the face of all.
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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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Though it is very important for man as an individual that his religion should be true, that is not the case for society. Society has nothing to fear or hope from another life what is most important for it is not that all citizens profess the true religion but that they should profess religion.
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There is hardly a congressman prepared to go home until he has at least one speech printed and sent to his constituents, and he won't let anybody interrupt his harangue until he has made all his useful suggestions about the 24 states of the Union, and especially the district he represents.
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Democratic institutions generally give men a lofty notion of their country and themselves.
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In countries where associations are free, secret societies are unknown. In America there are factions, but no conspiracies.
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No state of society or laws can render men so much alike but that education, fortune, and tastes will interpose some differences between them and though different men may sometimes find it their interest to combine for the same purposes, they will never make it their pleasure.
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I have an intellectual inclination for democratic institutions, but I am instinctively an aristocrat, which means that I despise and fear the masses. I passionately love liberty, legality, the respect for rights, but not democracy....liberty is my foremost passion. That is the truth.
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The will of the nation is one of those phrases most widely abused by schemers and tyrants of all ages.
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We need a new political science for a new world.
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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.
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Of all the countries of the world America is the one where the movement of thought and human industry is the most continuous and swift.
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This so-called tolerance, which, in my opinion, is nothing but a huge indifference.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith.
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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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In the United States, if a political character attacks a sect, this may not prevent even the partisans of that very sect, from supporting him but if he attacks all the sects together, every one abandons him and he remains alone.
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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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Nothing is so dangerous as that of violence employed by well-meaning people for beneficial objects.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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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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The best laws cannot make a constitution work in spite of morals morals can turn the worst laws to advantage.
Alexis de Tocqueville