Dec 2, 2008

Alexis de Tocqueville on individual rights

It is therefore most especially in the present democratic times that the true friends of the liberty and the greatness of man ought constantly to be on the alert, to prevent the power of government from lightly sacrificing the private rights of individuals to the general execution of its designs. At such times, no citizen is so obscure that it is not very dangerous to allow him to be oppressed; no private rights are so unimportant that they can be surrendered with impunity to the caprices of a government.

~ Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1835)

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