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

More quotes by Alexis de Tocqueville

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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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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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When, after having examined in detail the organization of the Supreme Court, one comes to consider in sum the prerogatives that have been given it, one discovers without difficulty that a more immense judicial power has never been constituted in any people.
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When the people rule, they must be rendered happy, or they will overturn the state.
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The last thing a political party gives up is its vocabulary.
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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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As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: how much money will it bring in?
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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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It is from the midst of this putrid sewer that the greatest river of human industry springs up and carries fertility to the whole world. From this foul drain pure gold flows forth.
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Nature secretly avenges herself for the constraint imposed upon her by the laws of man.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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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.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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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.
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If there ever are great revolutions there, they will be caused by the presence of the blacks upon American soil.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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I avow that I do not hold that complete and instantaneous love for the freedom of the press that one accords to things whose nature is unqualifiedly good. I love it out of consideration for the evils it prevents much more than for the good it does.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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Countries, therefore, when lawmaking falls exclusively to the lot of the poor cannot hope for much economy in public expenditure expenses will always be considerable, either because taxes cannot touch those who vote for them or because they are assessed in a way to prevent that.
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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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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.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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The tie of language is perhaps the strongest and the most durable that can unite mankind.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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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.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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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.
Alexis de Tocqueville