Dan Janes > Dan Janes's Quotes

“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville

“Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom, socialism restricts it. Democracy attaches all possible value to each man; socialism makes each man a mere agent, a mere number. 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 de Tocqueville

“When the taste for physical gratifications among them has grown more rapidly than their education . . . the time will come when men are carried away and lose all self-restraint . . . . It is not necessary to do violence to such a people in order to strip them of the rights they enjoy; they themselves willingly loosen their hold. . . . they neglect their chief business which is to remain their own masters.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America: Volume 2

“Society will develop a new kind of servitude which covers the surface of society with a network of complicated rules, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate. It does not tyrannise 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.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville

“There are many men of principle in both parties in America, but there is no party of principle.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville

“Nothing is more wonderful than the art of being free, but nothing is harder to learn how to use than freedom.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

“It is indeed difficult to imagine how men who have entirely renounced the habit of managing their own affairs could be successful in choosing those who ought to lead them. It is impossible to believe that a liberal, energetic, and wise government can ever emerge from the ballots of a nation of servants.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville

“There are two things which a democratic people will always find very difficult - to begin a war and to end it.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville

“everybody feels the evil, but no one has courage or energy enough to seek the cure”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

“It would seem as if the rulers of our time sought only to use men in order to make things great; I wish that they would try a little more to make great men; that they would set less value on the work and more upon the workman; that they would never forget that a nation cannot long remain strong when every man belonging to it is individually weak; and that no form or combination of social polity has yet been devised to make an energetic people out of a community of pusillanimous and enfeebled citizens.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America: Volume 2

“Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours.”
― John Locke

“I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts.”
― John Locke

“We are like chameleons, we take our hue and the color of our moral character, from those who are around us.”
― John Locke

“Revolt is the right of the people”
― John Locke

“How long have you been holding those words in your head, hoping to use them?”
― John Locke, Lethal People

“The only defense against the world is a thorough knowledge of it.”
― John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education

“Being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.”
― John Locke, Second Treatise of Government

“Education begins the gentleman, but reading, good company and reflection must finish him.”
― John Locke

“So that, in effect, religion, which should most distinguish us from beasts, and ought most peculiarly to elevate us, as rational creatures, above brutes, is that wherein men often appear most irrational, and more senseless than beasts themselves.”
― John Locke

“There is frequently more to be learned from the unexpected questions of a child than the discourses of men.”
― John Locke

“Our Business here is not to know all things, but those which concern our conduct.”
― Locke John, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Volume II

“Success in fighting means not coming at your opponent the way he wants to fight you.”
― John Locke, Vegas Moon

“Whosoever will list himself under the banner of Christ, must, in the first place and above all things, make war upon his own lusts and vices. It is in vain for any man to usurp the name of Christian, without holiness of life, purity of manners, benignity and meekness of spirit.”
― John Locke, Unknown Book 12380837

“To prejudge other men's notions before we have looked into them is not to show their darkness but to put out our own eyes.”
― John Locke

“I cannot live without books.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“Do you want to know who you are? Don't ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“I predict future happiness for Americans, if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“Honesty is the first chapter of the book wisdom.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.”
― Thomas Jefferson