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It must not be forgotten that it is especially dangerous to enslave men in the minor details of life.
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
Especially
Dangerous
Must
Men
Enslave
Life
Minor
Minors
Details
Forgotten
More quotes by Alexis de Tocqueville
It is easier for the world to accept a simple lie than a complex truth.
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In democratic ages men rarely sacrifice themselves for another, but they show a general compassion for all the human race. One never sees them inflict pointless suffering, and they are glad to relieve the sorrows of others when they can do so without much trouble to themselves. They are not disinterested, but they are gentle.
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The best laws cannot make a constitution work in spite of morals morals can turn the worst laws to advantage. That is a commonplace truth, but one to which my studies are always bringing me back. It is the central point in my conception. I see it at the end of all my reflections.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Nothing is so dangerous as that of violence employed by well-meaning people for beneficial objects.
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Of all nations, those submit to civilization with the most difficulty which habitually live by the chase.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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.
Alexis de Tocqueville
But one also finds in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to want to bring the strong down to their level, and which reduces men to preferring equality in servitude to inequality in freedom.
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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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It is from the midst of this putrid sewer that the greatest river of human industry springs up and carries fertility to the whole world. From this foul drain pure gold flows forth.
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America is a country where they have freedom of speech but everyone says the same thing.
Alexis de Tocqueville
On this waterlogged landscape....are scattered palaces and hovels....It is here that the human spirit becomes perfect, and at the same time brutalised, that civilisation produces its marvels and that civilised man returns to the savage.
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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
I have only one passion, the love of liberty and human dignity.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Chance does nothing that has not been prepared beforehand.
Alexis de Tocqueville
No protracted war can fail to endanger the freedom of a democratic country.
Alexis de Tocqueville
There is one universal law that has been formed, or at least adoptedby the majority of mankind. That law is justice. Justice forms the cornerstone of each nation's law.
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The last thing a political party gives up is its vocabulary.
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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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There is no country in the world where the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America.
Alexis de Tocqueville
