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The Americans combine the notions of religion and liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive of one without the other.

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
Minds
Americans
Liberty
Impossible
Intimately
Religion
Notions
Without
Combine
Mind
Conceive
Make
Notion

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The most durable monument of human labor is that which recalls the wretchedness and nothingness of man.
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Men are not corrupted by the exercise of power or debased by the habit of obedience, but by the exercise of a power which they believe to be illegal and by obedience to a rule which they consider to be usurped and oppressive.
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It is an axiom of political science in the United States that the sole means of neutralizing the effects of newspapers is to multiply their number.
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Of all the countries of the world America is the one where the movement of thought and human industry is the most continuous and swift.
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Those who prize freedom only for the material benefits it offers have never kept it for long.
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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.
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I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America.
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If there ever are great revolutions there, they will be caused by the presence of the blacks upon American soil.
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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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We succeed in enterprises which demand the positive qualities we possess, but we excel in those which can also make use of our defects.
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Nations, as well as man, almost always betray the most prominent features of their future destiny in their earliest years.
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The only authors whom I acknowledge as American are the journalists. They, indeed, are not great writers, but they speak the language of their countrymen, and make themselves heard by them.
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Rulers who destroy men's freedom commonly begin by trying to retain its forms. ... They cherish the illusion that they can combine the prerogatives of absolute power with the moral authority that comes from popular assent.
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Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.... The subjection of individuals will increase amongst democratic nations, not only in the same proportion as their equality, but in the same proportion as their ignorance.
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I do not find fault with equality for drawing men into the pursuit of forbidden pleasures, but for absorbing them entirely in the search for the pleasures that are permitted.
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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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On this waterlogged landscape....are scattered palaces and hovels....It is here that the human spirit becomes perfect, and at the same time brutalised, that civilisation produces its marvels and that civilised man returns to the savage.
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The most dangerous moment for a bad government is when it begins to reform.
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In the United States, if a political character attacks a sect, this may not prevent even the partisans of that very sect, from supporting him but if he attacks all the sects together, every one abandons him and he remains alone.
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In a revolution, as in a novel, the most difficult part to invent is the end.
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