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To get the inestimable good that freedom of the press assures one must know how to submit to the inevitable evil it gives rise to.

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
Press
Rise
Gives
Freedom
Inestimable
Evil
Assures
Must
Submit
Giving
Inevitable
Good
Presses

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Christianity has therefore retained a strong hold on the public mind in America... In the United States... Christianity itself is a fact so irresistibly established, that no one undertakes either to attack or to defend it.
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Nobody is going to occupy a place higher than I.
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The most perilous moment for a bad government is when it seeks to mend its ways. Only consummate statecraft can enable a king to save his throne when, after a long spell of oppression, he sets out to improve the lot of his subjects.
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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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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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If I were asked ... to what the singular prosperity and growing strength of Americans ought mainly to be attributed, I should reply: To the superiority of their women.
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It is an axiom of political science in the United States that the sole means of neutralizing the effects of newspapers is to multiply their number.
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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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It must not be forgotten that it is especially dangerous to enslave men in the minor details of life.
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I must say that I have seen Americans make great and real sacrifices to the public welfare and have noticed a hundred instances in which they hardly ever failed to lend faithful support to one another.
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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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It is indeed difficult to imagine how men who have entirely renounced the habit of managing their own affairs could be successful in choosing those who ought to lead them. It is impossible to believe that a liberal, energetic, and wise government can ever emerge from the ballots of a nation of servants.
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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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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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History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.
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There is no philosopher in the world so great but he believes a million things on the faith of other people and accepts a great many more truths than he demonstrates.
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