top of page
.png){kind=small}
"Every nation that has ended in tyranny has come to that end by way of good order. It certainly does not follow from this that peoples should scorn public peace, but neither should they be satisfied with that and nothing more. A nation that asks nothing of government but the maintenance of order is already a slave in the depths of its heart; it is a slave of its well-being, ready for the man who will put it in chains."
Standard
Customized
Exlpore more Freedom quotes
"No free man needs a God; but was I free?How fully I felt nature glued to meAnd how my childish palate loved the tasteHalf-fish, half-honey, of that golden paste!My picture book was at an early ageThe painted parchment papering our cage:Mauve rings around the moon; blood-orange sun;Twinned Iris; and that rare phenomenonThe iridule - when, beautiful and strange,In a bright sky above a mountain rangeOne opal cloudlet in an oval formReflects the rainbow of a thunderstormWhich in a distant valley has been staged -For we are most artistically caged."
"I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world."
"When no possessions keep us, when no countries contain us, and no time detains us, man becomes a heroic wanderer, and woman, a wanderess."
"If the holy spirit is in you, you are free, even if you are in a physical jail."
"It is at the precise moment that I take something for granted that I have placed myself in the precarious position of losing that very thing. And if that thing I risk losing is liberty, taking it for granted is foolishness of the most foolish sort."
Explore more quotes by Alexis de Tocqueville
"Amongst democratic nations men easily attain a certain equality of conditions: they can never attain the equality they desire. It perpetually retires from before them, yet without hiding itself from their sight, and in retiring draws them on. At every moment they think they are about to grasp it; it escapes at every moment from their hold. They are near enough to see its charms, but too far off to enjoy them; and before they have fully tasted its delights they die."
"The practice which obtains amongst the Americans of fixing the standard of their judgment in themselves alone, leads them to other habits of mind. As they perceive that they succeed in resolving without assistance all the little difficulties which their practical life presents, they readily conclude that everything in the world may be explained, and that nothing in it transcends the limits of the understanding. Thus they fall to denying what they cannot comprehend; which leaves them but little faith for whatever is extraordinary, and an almost insurmountable distaste for whatever is supernatural."
"The short space of threescore years can never content the imagination of man; nor can the imperfect joys of this world satisfy his heart. Man alone, of all created beings, displays a natural contempt of existence, and yet a boundless desire to exist; he scorns life, but he dreads annihilation. These different feelings incessantly urged his soul to the contemplation of a future state, and religion directs his musings thither. Religion, then, is simply another form of hope; and it is no less natural to the human heart than hope itself."
"Laws are always unstable unless they are founded upon the manners of the nation, manners are the only durable and resisting power in a people."
"There is a natural prejudice which prompts men to despise whomsoever has been their inferior long after he has become their equal."
"What is called family pride is often founded on the illusion of self-love. A man wishes to perpetuate and immortalize himself."
"Under the absolute sway of an individual despot the body was attacked in order to subdue the soul, and the soul escaped the blows which were directed against it and rose superior to the attempt; but such is not the course adopted by tyranny in democratic republics; there the body is left free, and the soul is enslaved."
"One has to understand that equality ends up by infiltrating the world of politics as it does everywhere else. It would be impossible to imagine men forever unequal in one respect, yet equal in others; they must, in the end, come to be equal in all.Now, I am aware of only two means of establishing equality in the world of politics: rights have to be granted to every citizen or to none."
"No true power can be founded among men which does not depend upon the free union of their inclinations, and patriotism and religion are the only two motives in the world which can permanently direct the whole of the body politic to one end."
"Sixty years is too brief a compass for man's imagination. The incomplete joys of this world can never satisfy his heart."
bottom of page