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The most dangerous moment for a bad government is when it begins to reform.

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
Moments
Government
Investing
Reform
Begins
Dangerous
Moment

More quotes by Alexis de Tocqueville

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The French under the old monarchy held it for a maxim that the king could do no wrong . The Americans entertain the same opinion with respect to the majority.... If ever the free institutions of America are destroyed, that event may be attributed to the omnipotence of the majority.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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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.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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The man who submits to violence is debased by his compliance but when he submits to that right of authority which he acknowledges in a fellow creature, he rises in some measure above the person who give the command.
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Amongst democratic nations, each new generation is a new people.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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Nothing is more wonderful than the art of being free, but nothing is harder to learn how to use than freedom.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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It is easy to see that, even in the freedom of early youth, an American girl never quite loses control of herself she enjoys all permitted pleasures without losing her head about any of them, and her reason never lets the reins go, though it may often seem to let them flap.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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As the past has ceased to throw its light upon the future, the mind of man wanders in obscurity.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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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 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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[R]eligion cannot share the material strength of the rulers without being burdened with some of the animosity roused against them.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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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.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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History, it is easily perceived, is a picture-gallery containing a host of copies and very few originals.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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Democratic nations care but little for what has been, but they are haunted by visions of what will be.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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In countries where associations are free, secret societies are unknown. In America there are factions, but no conspiracies.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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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.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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The more government takes the place of associations, the more will individuals lose the idea of forming associations and need the government to come to their help. That is a vicious circle of cause and effect.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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At the head of any new undertaking where in France you would find the government, or in England some great lord, in the United States you are sure to find an association.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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Democratic institutions generally give men a lofty notion of their country and themselves.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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Two things in America are astonishing: the changeableness of most human behavior and the strange stability of certain principles. Men are constantly on the move, but the spirit of humanity seems almost unmoved.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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In America, conscription is unknown men are enlisted for payment. Compulsory recruitment is so alien to the ideas and so foreign to the customs of the people of the United States that I doubt whether they would ever dare to introduce it into their law.
Alexis de Tocqueville