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Uncannily echoing the criticism that Tocqueville was soon to make of the French in the Ancien Regime and the French Revolution, Comte wrote that social reformers ran into the danger of sacrificing 'true liberty to a chimerical equality.' Like Tocqueville, Comte considered the pursuit of both liberty and equality to be absurd. Both had been useful tools in the battle against the ancien regime but now their 'natural incompatibility' had become more apparent. he wrote, 'For, a free growth develops
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― Auguste Comte: An Intellectual Biography, Volume II
― Auguste Comte: An Intellectual Biography, Volume II
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Tocqueville admired this small group of so-called Radicals, which had no counterpart in France. Unlike the French, these English Radicals respected the principles of democratic rule, they were not trying to impose utopian systems on an unwilling society; they respected the right to property as the basis for civilized society, they saw the political necessity of religion, and they were well educated. Tocqueville felt at ease with them, perhaps because, like them, they combined elitist manners wit
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― The Man Who Understood Democracy: The Life of Alexis de Tocqueville
― The Man Who Understood Democracy: The Life of Alexis de Tocqueville
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