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It is indeed difficult to imagine how men who have entirely renounced the habit of managing their own affairs could be successful in choosing those who ought to lead them. It is impossible to believe that a liberal, energetic, and wise government can ever emerge from the ballots of a nation of servants.

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
Government
Nation
Affairs
Ever
Ought
Liberal
Renounced
Believe
Wise
Servant
Ballots
Men
Impossible
Entirely
Managing
Imagine
Affair
Servants
Successful
Indeed
Energetic
Nations
Lead
Emerge
Difficult
Habit
Choosing

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The debates of that great assembly are frequently vague and perplexed, seeming to be dragged rather than to march, to the intended goal. Something of this sort must, I think, always happen in public democratic assemblies.
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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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To get the inestimable good that freedom of the press assures one must know how to submit to the inevitable evil it gives rise to.
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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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A newspaper is an adviser who does not require to be sought, but who comes of his own accord, and talks to you briefly every day of the common wealth, without distracting you from your private affairs.
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Remember that life is neither pain nor pleasure it is serious business, to be entered upon with courage and in a spirit of self-sacrifice.
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A state of equality is perhaps less elevated, but it is more just and its justice constitutes its greatness and beauty.
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So many of my thoughts and feelings are shared by the English that England has turned into a second native land of the mind for me.
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To remain silent is the most useful service that a mediocre speaker can render to the public good.
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Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith.
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Among a democratic people, where there is no hereditary wealth, every man works to earn a living, or is born of parents who have worked. The notion of labor is therefore presented to the mind, on every side, as the necessary, natural, and honest condition.
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An American cannot converse, but he can discuss, and his talk falls into a dissertation. He speaks to you as if he was addressing a meeting and if he should chance to become warm in the discussion, he will say 'Gentlemen' to the person with whom he is conversing.
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The Indian knew how to live without wants, to suffer without complaint, and to die singing.
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If men are to remain civilized or to become so, the art of associating together must grow and improve in the same ratio in which the equality of conditions is increased.
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Amongst democratic nations, each new generation is a new people.
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The more I view the independence of the press in its principal effects, the more I convince myself that among the moderns the independence of the press is the capital and so to speak the constitutive element of freedom.
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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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As for me, I am deeply a democrat this is why I am in no way a socialist. Democracy and socialism cannot go together. You can't have it both ways. Socialism is a new form of slavery.
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The last thing abandoned by a party is its phraseology.
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