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Consider any individual at any period of his life, and you will always find him preoccupied with fresh plans to increase his comfort.

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
Life
Periods
Increase
Air
Comfort
Preoccupied
Plans
Individuality
Individual
Fresh
Find
Period
Always
Consider

More quotes by Alexis de Tocqueville

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Christianity has therefore retained a strong hold on the public mind in America... In the United States... Christianity itself is a fact so irresistibly established, that no one undertakes either to attack or to defend it.
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I see no clear reason why the doctrine of self-interest properly understood should turn men away from religious beliefs.
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Men living in democratic times have many passions, but most of their passions either end in the love of riches, or proceed from it.
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A long war almost always places nations in this sad alternative: that their defeat delivers them to destruction and their triumph to despotism.
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In no other country in the world is the love of property keener or more alert than in the United States, and nowhere else does the majority display less inclination toward doctrines which in any way threaten the way property is owned.
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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 position of the Americans is quite exceptional, and it may be believed that no democratic people will ever be placed in a similar one.
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Any measure that establishes legal charity on a permanent basis and gives it an administrative form thereby creates an idle and lazy class, living at the expense of the industrial and working class.
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There is hardly a congressman prepared to go home until he has at least one speech printed and sent to his constituents, and he won't let anybody interrupt his harangue until he has made all his useful suggestions about the 24 states of the Union, and especially the district he represents.
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In democracies, nothing is more great or more brilliant than commerce: it attracts the attention of the public, and fills the imagination of the multitude all energetic passions are directed towards it.
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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.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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But one also finds in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to want to bring the strong down to their level, and which reduces men to preferring equality in servitude to inequality in freedom.
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Equality is a slogan based on envy. It signifies in the heart of every republican: Nobody is going to occupy a place higher than I.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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Christianity is the companion of liberty in all its conflicts, the cradle of its infancy, and the divine source of its claims.
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Whatever may be the general endeavor of a community to render its members equal and alike, the personal pride of individuals will always seek to rise above the line, and to form somewhere an inequality to their own advantage.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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Physical strength therefore is one of the first conditions of happiness and even of the existence of nations.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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I cannot believe that a republic could subsist if the influence of the lawyers in public business did not increase in proportion to the power of the people.
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I know of no other country where love of money has such a grip on men's hearts or where stronger scorn is expressed for the theory of permanent equality of property
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They all attributed the peaceful dominion of religion in their country mainly to the separation of church and state. I do not hesitate to affirm that during my stay in America I did not meet a single individual, of the clergy or the laity, who was not of the same opinion on this point.
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Despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot. How is it possible that society should escape destruction if the moral tie is not strengthened in proportion as the political tie is relaxed? And what can be done with a people who are their own masters if they are not submissive to the Deity?
Alexis de Tocqueville