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Nothing seems at first sight less important than the outward form of human actions, yet there is nothing upon which men set more store: they grow used to everything except to living in a society which has not their own manners.

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
Important
Seems
Grow
Men
Used
Grows
Outward
Firsts
Society
Store
Human
Upon
Manners
Everything
Less
Stores
Humans
Living
Actions
Nothing
Action
Sight
First
Form
Except

More quotes by Alexis de Tocqueville

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America is a land of wonders, in which everything is in constant motion and every change seems an improvement. No natural boundary seems to be set to the efforts of man and in his eyes what is not yet done is only what he has not attempted to do. - from Democracy in America
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Men seldom take the opinion of their equal, or of a man like themselves, upon trust.
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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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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.
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The progress of democracy seems irresistible, because it is the most uniform, the most ancient and the most permanent tendency which is to be found in history.
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The people reign over the American political world as God rules over the universe. It is the cause and the end of all things everything rises out of it and is absorbed back into it.
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Amongst democratic nations, each new generation is a new people.
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The taste which men have for liberty and that which they feel for equality are, in fact, two different things...among democratic nations they are two unequal things.
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At the head of any new undertaking where in France you would find the government, or in England some great lord, in the United States you are sure to find an association.
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I have always noticed in politics how often men are ruined by having too good a memory.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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The more alike men are, the weaker each feels in the face of all.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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I considered mores to be one of the great general causes responsible for the maintenance of a democratic republic . . . the term mores . . . meaning . . . habits of the heart.
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No state of society or laws can render men so much alike but that education, fortune, and tastes will interpose some differences between them and though different men may sometimes find it their interest to combine for the same purposes, they will never make it their pleasure.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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[T]he main evil of the present democratic institutions of the united states does not raise, as is often asserted in Europe, from their weakness, but from their irresistible strength. I am not so much alarmed at the excessive liberty which reigns in that country as at the inadequate securities which one finds there against tyranny.
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Those which we call necessary institutions are simply no more than institutions to which we have become accustomed.
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No men are less addicted to reverie than the citizens of a democracy.
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The civil jury is the most effective form of sovereignty of the people. It defies the aggressions of time and man. During the reigns of Henry VIII (1509-1547) and Elizabeth I (1158-1603), the civil jury did in reality save the liberties of England.
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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.
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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.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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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.
Alexis de Tocqueville