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When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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Alexis de Tocqueville
Age: 53 †
Born: 1805
Born: July 29
Died: 1859
Died: April 16
Historian
Jurist
Philosopher
Politician
Sociologist
Writer
Paris
France
Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville
Tocqueville
Alexis-Charles-Henri Clerel de Tocqueville
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Future
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Illuminates
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More quotes by Alexis de Tocqueville
I am far from denying that newspapers in democratic countries lead citizens to do very ill-considered things in common but without newspapers there would be hardly any common action at all. So they mend many more ills than they cause.
Alexis de Tocqueville
In America, conscription is unknown men are enlisted for payment. Compulsory recruitment is so alien to the ideas and so foreign to the customs of the people of the United States that I doubt whether they would ever dare to introduce it into their law.
Alexis de Tocqueville
To commit violent and unjust acts, it is not enough for a government to have the will or even the power the habits, ideas and passions of the time must lend themselves to their committal.
Alexis de Tocqueville
History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.
Alexis de Tocqueville
A man's admiration of absolute government is proportionate to the contempt he feels for those around him.
Alexis de Tocqueville
At the head of any new undertaking where in France you would find the government, or in England some great lord, in the United States you are sure to find an association.
Alexis de Tocqueville
The man who submits to violence is debased by his compliance but when he submits to that right of authority which he acknowledges in a fellow creature, he rises in some measure above the person who give the command.
Alexis de Tocqueville
The prejudice of the race appears stronger in the States that have abolished slaves than in the States where slavery still exists. White carpenters, white bricklayers, and white painters will not work side by side with the blacks in the North but do it in almost every Southern State.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Military discipline is merely a perfection of social servitude.
Alexis de Tocqueville
In the principle of equality I very clearly discern two tendencies one leading the mind of every man to untried thoughts, the other prohibiting him from thinking at all.
Alexis de Tocqueville
As the past has ceased to throw its light upon the future, the mind of man wanders in obscurity.
Alexis de Tocqueville
By obliging men to turn their attention to other affairs than their own, it rubs off that private selfishness which is the rust of society.
Alexis de Tocqueville
As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: how much money will it bring in?
Alexis de Tocqueville
The man who asks of freedom anything other than itself is born to be a slave.
Alexis de Tocqueville
I considered mores to be one of the great general causes responsible for the maintenance of a democratic republic . . . the term mores . . . meaning . . . habits of the heart.
Alexis de Tocqueville
No men are less addicted to reverie than the citizens of a democracy.
Alexis de Tocqueville
[R]eligion cannot share the material strength of the rulers without being burdened with some of the animosity roused against them.
Alexis de Tocqueville
In a revolution, as in a novel, the most difficult part to invent is the end.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Comfort becomes a goal when distinctions of rank are abolished and privileges destroyed.
Alexis de Tocqueville
The Indian knew how to live without wants, to suffer without complaint, and to die singing.
Alexis de Tocqueville
