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Every central government worships uniformity: uniformity relieves it from inquiry into an infinity of details.

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
Worships
Liberty
Economic
Uniformity
Government
Inquiry
Every
Infinity
Central
Economics
Details
Relieves
Worship

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On this waterlogged landscape....are scattered palaces and hovels....It is here that the human spirit becomes perfect, and at the same time brutalised, that civilisation produces its marvels and that civilised man returns to the savage.
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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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The French want no-one to be their superior. The English want inferiors. The Frenchman constantly raises his eyes above him with anxiety. The Englishman lowers his beneath him with satisfaction.
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The French constitute the most brilliant and the most dangerous nation in Europe and the best qualified in turn to become an object of admiration, hatred, pity or terror but never indifference.
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Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.
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No state of society or laws can render men so much alike but that education, fortune, and tastes will interpose some differences between them and though different men may sometimes find it their interest to combine for the same purposes, they will never make it their pleasure.
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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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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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Democracy does not create strong ties between people. But it does make living together easier.
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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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I have only one passion, the love of liberty and human dignity.
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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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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.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.... The subjection of individuals will increase amongst democratic nations, not only in the same proportion as their equality, but in the same proportion as their ignorance.
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Grant me thirty years of equal division of inheritances and a free press, and I will provide you with a republic.
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The only authors whom I acknowledge as American are the journalists. They, indeed, are not great writers, but they speak the language of their countrymen, and make themselves heard by them.
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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.
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The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.
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The will of the nation is one of those phrases most widely abused by schemers and tyrants of all ages.
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But what most astonishes me in the United States, is not so much the marvelous grandeur of some undertakings, as the innumerable multitude of small ones.
Alexis de Tocqueville