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The main business of religions is to purify, control, and restrain that excessive and exclusive taste for well-being which men acquire in times of equality.

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
Taste
Purify
Control
Restrain
Times
Excessive
Business
Exclusive
Wells
Religions
Well
Acquire
Men
Equality
Main
Excessiveness

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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.
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In America one of the first things done in a new State is to make the post go there in the forests of Michigan there is no cabin so isolated, no valley so wild, but that letters and newspapers arrive at least once a week.
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In countries where associations are free, secret societies are unknown. In America there are factions, but no conspiracies.
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The regime which is destroyed by a revolution is almost always an improvement on its immediate predecessor, and experience teaches that the most critical moment for bad governments is the one which witnesses their first steps toward reform.
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I cannot help fearing that men may reach a point where they look on every new theory as a danger, every innovation as a toilsome trouble, every social advance as a first step toward revolution, and that they may absolutely refuse to move at all.
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If I were asked ... to what the singular prosperity and growing strength of Americans ought mainly to be attributed, I should reply: To the superiority of their women.
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If an American was condemned to confine his activity to his own affairs, he would be robbed of one half of his existence.
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Nature secretly avenges herself for the constraint imposed upon her by the laws of man.
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This so-called tolerance, which, in my opinion, is nothing but a huge indifference.
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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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The aspect of American society is animated, because men and things are always changing but it is monotonous, because all the changes are alike.
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Furthermore, when citizens are all almost equal, it becomes difficult for them to defend their independence against the aggressions of power.
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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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A great democratic revolution is taking place in our midst.
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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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I studied the Koran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Muhammad.
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