Comfort becomes a goal when distinctions of rank are abolished and privileges destroyed.

The taste which men have for liberty and that which they feel for equality are, in fact, two different things...among democratic nations they are two unequal things.

What good does it do me, after all, if an ever-watchful authority keeps an eye out to ensure that my pleasures will be tranquil and races ahead of me to ward off all danger, sparing me the need even to think about such things, if that authority, even as it removes the smallest thorns from my path, is also absolute master of my liberty and my life; if it monopolizes vitality and existence to such a degree that when it languishes, everything around it must also languish; when it sleeps, everything must also sleep; and when it dies, everything must also perish?

Better use has been made of association and this powerful instrument of action has been applied for more varied aims in America than anywhere else in the world.

No stigma attaches to the love of money in America, and provided it does not exceed the bounds imposed by public order, it is held in honor. The American will describe as noble and estimable ambition that our medieval ancestors would have called base cupidity.

We can state with conviction, therefore, that a man's support for absolute government is in direct proportion to the contempt he feels for his country.

Every central government worships uniformity: uniformity relieves it from inquiry into an infinity of details.