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There is hardly a pioneer's hut which does not contain a few odd volumes of Shakespeare. I remember reading the feudal drama of Henry V for the first time in a log cabin.
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
Time
Hardly
Volumes
Drama
Pioneer
Education
Pioneers
Reading
Henry
Remember
Contain
Feudal
Doe
Volume
Cabin
Firsts
Shakespeare
Cabins
First
Odd
Huts
More quotes by Alexis de Tocqueville
European Christianity has allowed itself to be intimately united with the powers of this world. Now that these powers are falling, it is as if it were buried under their ruins.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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.
Alexis de Tocqueville
It is easier for the world to accept a simple lie than a complex truth.
Alexis de Tocqueville
The foremost or indeed sole condition required in order to succeed in centralizing the supreme power in a democratic community is to love equality or to get men to believe you love it. Thus, the science of despotism, which was once so complex, has been simplified and reduced, as it were, to a single principle.
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 American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.
Alexis de Tocqueville
A man who raises himself by degrees to wealth and power, contracts, in the course of this protracted labor, habits of prudence and restraint which he cannot afterwards shake off. A man cannot gradually enlarge his mind as he does his house.
Alexis de Tocqueville
It is the dissimilarities and inequalities among men which give rise to the notion of honor as such differences become less, it grows feeble and when they disappear, it will vanish too.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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.
Alexis de Tocqueville
In politics shared hatreds are almost always the basis of friendships.
Alexis de Tocqueville
It must not be forgotten that it is especially dangerous to enslave men in the minor details of life.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Nature secretly avenges herself for the constraint imposed upon her by the laws of man.
Alexis de Tocqueville
The more government takes the place of associations, the more will individuals lose the idea of forming associations and need the government to come to their help. That is a vicious circle of cause and effect.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Despotism often presents itself as the repairer of all the ills suffered, the support of just rights, defender of the oppressed, and founder of order.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Of all nations, those submit to civilization with the most difficulty which habitually live by the chase.
Alexis de Tocqueville
However energetically society in general may strive to make all the citizens equal and alike, the personal pride of each individual will always make him try to escape from the common level, and he will form some inequality somewhere to his own profit.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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
Alexis de Tocqueville
Among these widely differing families of men, the first that attracts attention, the superior in intelligence, in power, and in enjoyment, is the white, or European, the MAN pre-eminently so called, below him appear the Negro and the Indian.
Alexis de Tocqueville
When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness.
Alexis de Tocqueville