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You may be sure that the Americans will commit all the stupidities they can think of, plus some that are beyond imagination. Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle		Friday Jul 24, 2026
		Quotes: 53419 Authors: 9969

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Despotism may govern without faith, but Liberty cannot. Charles Alexis Henri Clérel de Tocqueville

Quote Author: Charles Alexis Henri Clérel de Tocqueville

	Charles Alexis Henri Clérel de Tocqueville
	(1805-1859) Tocqueville in Democracy in America, 1835 - French statesman & author.

Other Charles Alexis Henri Clérel de Tocqueville Quotes

What is not yet done is only what we have not yet attempted to do.

America is a country where they have freedom of speech but everyone says the same thing.

America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.

But what most astonishes me in the United States, is not so much the marvelous grandeur of some undertakings, as the innumerable multitude of small ones.

I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and her ample rivers, and it was not there. In the fertile fields and boundless prairies, and it was not there. In her rich mines and her vast world commerce, and it was not there. Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits, aflame with righteousness, did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.

After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the government then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence: it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.

Despotism may govern without faith, but Liberty cannot.

Laws are always unstable unless they are founded on the manners of a nation; and manners are the only durable and resisting power in a people.

Christianity is the companion of liberty in all its conflicts, the cradle of its infancy, and the divine source of its claims.