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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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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
Gossip
Affairs
Affair
Activity
Existence
American
Confine
Half
Robbed
Would
Condemned

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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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The happy and powerful do not go into exile, and there are no surer guarantees of equality among men than poverty and misfortune.
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If there ever are great revolutions there, they will be caused by the presence of the blacks upon American soil.
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The power of the periodical press is second only to that of the people.
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I know without needing to hear the voice of the Creator that the stars trace out in space the orbits which His hand has drawn.
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Democratic institutions generally give men a lofty notion of their country and themselves.
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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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Men seldom take the opinion of their equal, or of a man like themselves, upon trust.
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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 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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History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.
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Among the laws controlling human societies there is one more precise and clearer, it seems to me, than all the others. If men are to remain civilized or to become civilized, the art of association must develop and improve among them at the same speed as equality of conditions spreads.
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On close inspection, we shall find that religion, and not fear, has ever been the cause of the long-lived prosperity of an absolute government.
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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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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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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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What is understood by republican government in the United States is the slow and quiet action of society upon itself.
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All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and shortest means to accomplish it.
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A long war almost always places nations in this sad alternative: that their defeat delivers them to destruction and their triumph to despotism.
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The Americans combine the notions of religion and liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive of one without the other.
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