The prestige of royal power has evaporated, but the majesty of the law has failed to take its place. People nowadays despise authority yet still fear… - Alexis de Tocqueville

Men cannot abandon their religious faith without a kind of aberration of intellect and a sort of violent distortion of their true nature; they are invincibly brought back to more pious sentiments. Unbelief is an accident, and faith is the only permanent state of mankind.

Furthermore, when citizens are all almost equal, it becomes difficult for them to defend their independence against the aggressions of power.

I know of no country, indeed, where the love of money has taken stronger hold on the affections of men, and where the profounder contempt is expressed for the theory of the permanent equality of property.