监控中心发现车祸:Online Library of Liberty

Home

The Forum

The Library

The Library

"to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals"

↓ Major Collections | Founders | Quotations | Images | Latest Additions | Anniversaries ↓

Quotations about Liberty and Power

Tocqueville on the “New Despotism” (1837)

For volume 2 of Democracy in America (1840) Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) drew up several drafts of his thoughts on the nature of what he called the “new despotism” which he predicted would gradually emerge and turn the nation into “a flock of timid and hardworking animals”. This draft is quoted at length in James Schleifer’s book on Tocqueville:

Thus it daily makes the exercise of free choice less useful and rarer, restricts the activity of free will within a narrower compass, and little by little robs each citizen of the proper use of his own faculties. Equality has prepared men for all this, predisposing them to endure it and often even regard it as beneficial.

Having thus taken each citizen in turn in its powerful grasp and shaped men to its will, government then extends its embrace to include the whole of society. It covers the whole of social life with a network of petty, complicated rules that are both minute and uniform, through which even men of the greatest originality and the most vigorous temperament cannot force their heads above the crowd. It does not break men’s will, but softens, bends, and guides it; it seldom enjoins, but often inhibits, action; it does not destroy anything, but prevents much being born; it is not at all tyrannical, but it hinders, restrains, enervates, stifles, and stultifies so much that in the end each nation is no more than a flock of timid and hardworking animals with the government as its shepherd.

See full quote and previous quotations about liberty.

Read the full quote in context here.

[More works by Alexis de Tocqueville (1805 – 1859) and on 19th Century French Liberalism]

Major Figures & Collections ↑

Founders of the American Republic ↑

[See also this more complete collection].

Images of Liberty and Power ↑

Pieter Brueghel, Taxation, and Christmas

Pieter Brueghel the Elder (1525-1569) was a Flemish painter famous for his landscapes and depictions of peasant life. In this painting he takes Luke's account of the birth of Jesus in the town of Bethlehem and transposes it to mid-16th century Netherlands. The Reformation had taken root in the Netherlands which at that time was ruled by Catholic Spain under the Bourbon monarch Philip II. In addition to religious turmoil and persecution, the Flemish people suffered under heavy taxation imposed by Philip II in order to fight wars against the Ottoman Turks for control of the Mediterranean. In this context it is not surprising that Brueghel would find the biblical story of Joseph and Mary, forced by the Roman Emperor Caesar Augustus to return to their ancestral city in order to be taxed, rather compelling. In the left foreground we see a cluster of ordinary people lined up to have their names checked off a ledger and then forced to hand over their taxes to an imperial official. The rest of the painting is taken up with scenes of ordinary people at work and play in the middle of winter. The Dutch Revolt against Spanish imperial control broke out in 1568 shortly after the work was painted. [More]
[See other works on the Protestant Reformation]

[Archive of Images]
[Detailed Study Guides on Images of Liberty and Power]
[See our collection of paired Quotations and Images about Liberty & Power]

Recent Additions to the Library ↑

January additions:

• Book: Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the Revolution (1856)

[Illuminated page for the month of January from Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry (1416)].
[January: the month of aristocratic gift giving and feasting. See a larger image and a description of its contents]

December additions:

• Book: Washington, Writings, vols. 10, 11, 12, 13, 14
• Book: Washington, Writings, vols. 8 & 9
• Liberty Matters: Selected Quotations from Bastiat’s Collected Works, vol. 1 (2011)
• Book: Washington, Writings, vols. 8 & 9
• Liberty Matters: Selected Quotations from Bastiat’s Collected Works, vol. 1 (2011)
• Book: Washington, Writings, vol. 7 (1778-79)
• Book: Political Writings of William Leggett (1840), vol. 2
• Liberty Matters: Quotes on Liberty and Power (2004-2011)
• Quote: Leggett on the tendency of the government to become “the universal dispenser of good and evil” (1834)
• Book: Political Writings of William Leggett (1840), vol. 1
• Quote: Socrates as the “gadfly” of the state (4thC BC)
• Book: Washington, Writings, vol. 6 (1777-78)

[Illuminated page for the month of December from Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry (1416)].
[See larger image]

Anniversaries in 2012 ↑

Each year we list the significant anniversaries of authors or books in our collection:. See the full list of Books & Authors for 2012. Here are some highlights:

• 100th - publication of Mises, The Theory of Money and Credit (1912)
• 100th - birth of the American monetarist economist Milton Friedman (1912-2007)
• 100th - death of the Belgian/French economist Gustave de Molinari (1819-1912)

[See the annivesaries for 2013 (Books) - 2013 (People)]

Elsewhere in the OLL Website

Structure of the Site | Features | About the OLL Website | Liberty Fund's Other Websites | Copyright and Fair Use Statement

New & Noteworthy

• ePub ↓
• Liberty Review ↓
• Liberty Matters ↓
• Bastiat ↓
• PLL DVD ↓
• Quick Links ↓

Portable Library DVD

The new 6th edition of the Portable Library of Liberty data DVD is available. It now also includes ePub and Kindle versions of the texts. Request a complimentary copy.

ePub & Kindle

• 850 OLL titles in ePub format [Full List]
• 790 OLL titles in Kindle/Mobi format

Liberty Review

Liberty Matters

Occasional thoughts and reflections on matters pertaining to Liberty by the Editor and guest commentators:

• Notes on Leveller Tracts
• Bastiat's Collected Works vol. 1.

[More Liberty Matters]

Works of Bastiat

The first volume of Liberty Fund's 6 volume translation of the Collected Works of Frédéric Bastiat is online.

[See more by Frédéric Bastiat]

Quick Links

Recent Additions

• MARC records
• Forum (RSS)
• Library (RSS)
• Reading Lists (RSS)
• New Features

• Books
• People
• Ideas

• Forum - Essays/Guides
• Library - Author/Title
• Library - Full Text

• Reading Lists
• The Forum
• The Library