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Religion, which never intervenes directly in the government of American society, should therefore be considered as the first of their political institutions

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
Considered
Firsts
Institutions
First
Never
Therefore
Society
American
Religion
Intervenes
Political
Directly
Government

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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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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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It must not be forgotten that it is especially dangerous to enslave men in the minor details of life.
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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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America is a land of wonders, in which everything is in constant motion and every change seems an improvement. No natural boundary seems to be set to the efforts of man and in his eyes what is not yet done is only what he has not attempted to do. - from Democracy in America
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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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It must not be forgotten that it is especially dangerous to enslave men in the minor details of life. For my part, I should be inclined to think freedom less necessary in the great things than in the little ones, if it were possible to be secure of the one without the other.
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Physical strength therefore is one of the first conditions of happiness and even of the existence of nations.
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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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You need not value it yourself if you do not wish to but you ought to allow it to us who do value it.
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Useful undertakings which require sustained attention and vigorous precision in order to succeed often end up by being abandoned, for, in America, as elsewhere, the people move forward by sudden impulses and short-lived efforts.
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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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