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In the United States, the majority undertakes to supply a multitude of ready-made opinions for the use of individuals, who are thus relieved from the necessity of forming opinions of their own.

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
United
Necessity
Individual
Opinions
Use
Individuals
Undertakes
Political
Thus
Forming
States
Majority
Relieved
Made
Ready
Multitude
Opinion
Multitudes
Politics
Supply

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There is no country in the world where the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America.
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Remember that life is neither pain nor pleasure it is serious business, to be entered upon with courage and in a spirit of self-sacrifice.
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One of the most ordinary weaknesses of the human intellect is to seek to reconcile contrary principles, and to purchase peace at the expense of logic.
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One of the happiest consequences of the absence of government...is the development of individual strength that inevitably follows.
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Socialism is a new form of slavery.
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When none but the wealthy had watches, they were almost all very good ones few are now made which are worth much, but everybody has one in his pocket.
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There are at the present time two great nations in the world - allude to the Russians and the Americans. All other nations seem to have nearly reached their national limits, and have only to maintain their power these alone are proceeding along a path to which no limit can be perceived.
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When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness.
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everybody feels the evil, but no one has courage or energy enough to seek the cure
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The public, therefore, among a democratic people, has a singular power, which aristocratic nations cannot conceive for it does not persuade others to its beliefs, but it imposes them and makes them permeate the thinking of everyone by a sort of enormous pressure of the mind of all upon the individual intelligence.
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[R]eligion cannot share the material strength of the rulers without being burdened with some of the animosity roused against them.
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With much care and skill power has been broken into fragments in the American township, so that the maximum possible number of people have some concern with public affairs.
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A democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it.
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When the people rule, they must be rendered happy, or they will overturn the state.
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To get the inestimable good that freedom of the press assures one must know how to submit to the inevitable evil it gives rise to.
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I should have loved freedom, I believe, at all times, but in the time in which we live I am ready to worship it.
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Democratic institutions generally give men a lofty notion of their country and themselves.
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In a revolution, as in a novel, the most difficult part to invent is the end.
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Laws are always unstable unless they are founded on the manners of a nation and manners are the only durable and resisting power in a people.
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The Indian knew how to live without wants, to suffer without complaint, and to die singing.
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