FREEDOM VERSUS EQUALITY
SOME INTERESTING QUOTES FROM TOCQUEVILLE'S DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA
There exists in the human heart a depraved taste for equality which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom.
The evils which freedom sometimes brings with it are immediate; they are apparent to all, and all are more or less affected by them.
The evils which extreme equality may produce are slowly disclosed; they creep gradually into the social frame; they are only seen at intervals, and at the moment at which they become most violent, habit already causes them to be no longer felt.
The advantages which freedom brings are only shown by length of time; and it is always easy to mistake the cause in which they originate. The advantages of equality are instantaneous, and they may constantly be traced from their source.
Political liberty bestows exalted pleasures, from time to time, upon a certain number of citizens. Equality every day confers a number of small enjoyments on every man.
The charms of equality are every instant felt, and are within the reach of all; the noblest hearts are not insensible to them, and the most vulgar souls exult in them. The passion which equality engenders must therefore be at once strong and general.
Men cannot enjoy political liberty unpurchased by some sacrifices, and they never obtain it without great exertions.
But the pleasures of equality are self-proffered: each of the petty incidents of life seems to occasion them, and in order to taste them nothing is required but to live.