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Freedom sees in religion the companion of its struggles and its triumphs, the cradle of its infancy, the divine source of its rights. It considers religion as the safeguard of mores and mores as the guarantee of laws and the pledge of its duration.

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
Struggle
Guarantee
Safeguard
Liberty
Guarantees
Considers
Rights
Companion
Triumphs
Law
Triumph
Duration
Religious
Sees
Infancy
Freedom
Laws
Cradle
Religion
Source
Pledge
Divine
Struggles
Mores

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The taste which men have for liberty and that which they feel for equality are, in fact, two different things...among democratic nations they are two unequal things.
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The last thing abandoned by a party is its phraseology, because among political parties, as elsewhere, the vulgar make the language, and the vulgar abandon more easily the ideas that have been instilled into it than the words that it has learnt.
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There is no country in the world where the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America.
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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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I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America.
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Men seldom take the opinion of their equal, or of a man like themselves, upon trust.
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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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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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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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When I refuse to obey an unjust law, I do not contest the right of the majority to command, but I simply appeal from the sovereignty of the people to the sovereignty of mankind.
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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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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.
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In America a woman loses her independence for ever in the bonds of matrimony. While there is less constraint on girls there than anywhere else, a wife submits to stricter obligations. For the former, her father's house is a home of freedom and pleasure for the latter, her husband's is almost a cloister.
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Whatever may be the general endeavor of a community to render its members equal and alike, the personal pride of individuals will always seek to rise above the line, and to form somewhere an inequality to their own advantage.
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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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[R]eligion cannot share the material strength of the rulers without being burdened with some of the animosity roused against them.
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You may be sure that if you succeed in bringing your audience into the presence of something that affects them, they will not care by what road you brought them there and they will never reproach you for having excited their emotions in spite of dramatic rules.
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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.
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The more alike men are, the weaker each feels in the face of all.
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Men living in democratic times have many passions, but most of their passions either end in the love of riches, or proceed from it.
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