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Men cannot abandon their religious faith without a kind of aberration of intellect and a sort of violent distortion of their true nature they are invincibly brought back to more pious sentiments. Unbelief is an accident, and faith is the only permanent state of mankind.

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
Without
Religious
Abandon
Kind
State
Accidents
Men
Faith
Permanent
Aberration
True
Intellect
Distortion
Nature
Violent
Unbelief
Cannot
Brought
Pious
States
Mankind
Sentiments
Back
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Accident

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One of the happiest consequences of the absence of government...is the development of individual strength that inevitably follows.
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The power of the periodical press is second only to that of the people.
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The electors see their representative not only as a legislator for the state but also as the natural protector of local interests in the legislature indeed, they almost seem to think that he has a power of attorney to represent each constituent, and they trust him to be as eager in their private interests as in those of the country.
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The Indian knew how to live without wants, to suffer without complaint, and to die singing.
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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.
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In the United States, associations are established to promote the public safety, commerce, industry, morality, and religion. There is no end which the human will despairs of attaining through the combined power of individuals united into a society.
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The genius of democracies is seen not only in the great number of new words introduced but even more in the new ideas they express.
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When an American asks for the cooperation of his fellow citizens, it is seldom refused and I have often seen it afforded spontaneously and with great good will.
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I should have loved freedom, I believe, at all times, but in the time in which we live I am ready to worship it.
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Nothing is quite so wretchedly corrupt as an aristocracy which has lost its power but kept its wealth and which still has endless leisure to devote to nothing but banal enjoyments. All its great thoughts and passionate energy are things of the past, and nothing but a host of petty, gnawing vices now cling to it like worms to a corpse.
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The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.
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A great democratic revolution is taking place in our midst.
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What is understood by republican government in the United States is the slow and quiet action of society upon itself.
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What is most important for democracy is not that great fortunes should not exist, but that great fortunes should not remain in the same hands. In that way there are rich men, but they do not form a class.
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It profits me but little, after all, that a vigilant authority always protects the tranquility of my pleasures and constantly averts all dangers from my path, without my care or concern, if this same authority is the absolute master of my liberty and my life.
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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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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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Religion, which never intervenes directly in the government of American society, should therefore be considered as the first of their political institutions
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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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I must say that I have seen Americans make great and real sacrifices to the public welfare and have noticed a hundred instances in which they hardly ever failed to lend faithful support to one another.
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