Alexis de Tocqueville

The despotism of faction is not less to be dreaded than the despotism of an individual.

True friends of liberty… ought constantly to be on the alert to prevent the power of government from lightly sacrificing the private rights of individuals to the general execution of its designs. At such times no citizen is so obscure that it is not very dangerous to allow him to be oppressed; no private rights are so unimportant that they can be surrendered with impunity to the caprices of a government… [because] men accustom themselves to sacrifice private interest without scruple and to trample on the rights of individuals in order more speedily to accomplish any public purpose.

Americans believe their freedom to be the best instrument and surest safeguard… to secure for themselves a government which will allow them to acquire the things they covet and which will not debar them from the peaceful enjoyment of those possessions.

I am not so much alarmed at the excessive liberty which reigns… as at the inadequate securities which one finds there against tyranny.

No sooner does a government attempt to go beyond its political sphere… than it exercises… insupportable tyranny.

When…the people are invested with the supreme authority…they discover a multitude of wants… to satisfy these exigencies recourse must be had to the coffers of the state.

Undoubtedly, our path is not of the easiest; but, just as undoubtedly, we are not to be frightened by difficulties. Paraphrasing from the well-known words of Luther, Russia might say: ‘Here I stand on the frontier between the old, capitalist world and the new, socialist world. Here on this frontier I unite the efforts of the proletarians of the West and of the peasantry of the East in order to shatter the old world. May the god of history be my aid!

The media system protects itself with indignation against a challenge to the right of deceit in the service of power, and the very idea of subjecting the ideological system to rational inquiry elicits incomprehension or outrage, though it is often masked in other terms.

You do not lament the loss of hair of one who has been beheaded.

When violence against women is no longer societally accepted, no longer kept secret; when everyone understands that even one case is too many. That’s when it will change.

You could imagine that a democratic society would have an organization that carries out intelligence gathering functions. But that’s a very minor part of what the CIA does.

We, in Syria, our point of view stems from our experience.

This is not a battle between the United States of America and terrorism, but between the free and democratic world and terrorism.

In our democracy every young person should have an equal opportunity to obtain a higher education, regardless of his station in life or financial means.

I believe Mrs. Thatcher’s emphasis on enterprise was right.

They think because they have put my husband on an island that he will be forgotten. They are wrong. The harder they try to silence him, the louder I will become!

[on the 2016 election] In light of this last election, I’m concerned about us as women and how we think. What is going on in our heads where we let that happen, you know?

I would have set out very quickly the relationship with Europe.

It’s not that India was a peaceful place before — it wasn’t. Nor was the western hemisphere a pacifist utopia. But there’s no doubt that almost everywhere the Europeans went they raised the level of violence to a significant degree.

The fightback now of our party gathers speed and gathers pace.

The Europeans destroyed what was in their way. That was true over almost the entire world, with very few exceptions. European wars were wars of extermination. If we were to be honest about that history, we would describe it simply as a barbarian invasion.