Notable Quote

"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."

Tocqueville, Alexis de event 1835

From Democracy in America

Context: Tocqueville's famous warning about the subtle form of tyranny that can emerge in democratic societies through administrative despotism