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The aspect of American society is animated, because men and things are always changing but it is monotonous, because all the changes are alike.

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
Changing
Changes
Aspect
Society
American
Always
Monotonous
Things
Animated
Men
Alike

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Generally speaking, only simple conceptions can grip the mind of a nation. An idea that is clear and precise even though false will always have greater power in the world than an idea that is true but complex.
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Those who prize freedom only for the material benefits it offers have never kept it for long.
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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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We need a new political science for a new world.
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What is not yet done is only what we have not yet attempted to do.
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A democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it.
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The Americans make associations to give entertainment, to found seminaries, to build inns, to construct churches, to diffuse books, to send missionaries to the antipodes in this manner, they found hospitals, prisons and schools.
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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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If there ever are great revolutions there, they will be caused by the presence of the blacks upon American soil.
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In America, more than anywhere else in the world, care has been taken constantly to trace clearly distinct spheres of action for the two sexes, and both are required to keep in step, but along paths that are never the same.
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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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When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness.
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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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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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Among these widely differing families of men, the first that attracts attention, the superior in intelligence, in power, and in enjoyment, is the white, or European, the MAN pre-eminently so called, below him appear the Negro and the Indian.
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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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We can state with conviction, therefore, that a man's support for absolute government is in direct proportion to the contempt he feels for his country.
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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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How could a society escape destruction if, when political ties are relaxed, moral ties are not tightened, and what can be done with a people master of itself if it not subject to God?
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The evil which one suffers patiently as inevitable seems insupportable as soon as he conceives the idea of escaping from it.
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