I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. Alexis Charles Henri Clrel de Tocqueville More Quotes by Alexis Charles Henri Clrel de Tocqueville More Quotes From Alexis Charles Henri Clrel de Tocqueville America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great. Alexis Charles Henri Clrel de Tocqueville 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. Alexis Charles Henri Clrel de Tocqueville Whoever has inhabited the United States must have perceived that in those parts of the Union in which the Negroes are no longer slaves the have in no wise drawn nearer to the whites. On the contrary, the prejudice of race appears to be stronger in the states that have abolished slavery than those where it still exists and nowhere is it intolerant as in those states where servitude has never been known. Alexis Charles Henri Clrel de Tocqueville ...The electoral franchise has been conferred upon the Negroes in almost all the states in which slavery has been abolished, but if they come forward to vote, their lives are in danger... The same schools do not receive the children of the black and of the European. In the theaters gold cannot procure a seat for the servile race beside their former masters in the hospitals they lie apart... Not only is slavery prohibited in Ohio, but no free Negroes are allowed to enter the territory of that state or to hold property in it. Alexis Charles Henri Clrel de Tocqueville America is a land of wonders, in which everything is in constant motion and every change seems an improvement. No natural boundary seems to be set to the efforts of man and in his eyes what is not yet done is only what he has not attempted to do. - from Democracy in America Alexis Charles Henri Clrel de Tocqueville In the South where slavery still exists, the Negroes are less carefully kept apart they sometimes share the labors and the recreations of the whites the whites consent to intermix with them to a certain extent, and although legislation treats them more harshly, the habits of the people are more tolerant and compassionate. Alexis Charles Henri Clrel de Tocqueville Nothing is quite so wretchedly corrupt as an aristocracy which has lost its power but kept its wealth and which still has endless leisure to devote to nothing but banal enjoyments. All its great thoughts and passionate energy are things of the past, and nothing but a host of petty, gnawing vices now cling to it like worms to a corpse. Alexis Charles Henri Clrel de Tocqueville
