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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.

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
Mean
Number
Effects
Neutralizing
Numbers
Axiom
United
Axioms
Means
Multiply
Science
Sole
Political
Newspapers
States
Presses

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Can it be believed that the democracy, which has overthrown the feudal system and vanquished kings, will retreat before tradesmen and capitalists?
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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.
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In politics shared hatreds are almost always the basis of friendships.
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One of the most ordinary weaknesses of the human intellect is to seek to reconcile contrary principles, and to purchase peace at the expense of logic.
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Nothing is more annoying in the ordinary intercourse of life than this irritable patriotism of the Americans. A foreigner will gladly agree to praise much in their country, but he would like to be allowed to criticize something, and that he is absolutely refused.
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The regime which is destroyed by a revolution is almost always an improvement on its immediate predecessor, and experience teaches that the most critical moment for bad governments is the one which witnesses their first steps toward reform.
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The whole life of an American is passed like a game of chance, a revolutionary crisis, or a battle.
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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.
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Nations, as well as man, almost always betray the most prominent features of their future destiny in their earliest years.
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Those which we call necessary institutions are simply no more than institutions to which we have become accustomed.
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An American cannot converse, but he can discuss, and his talk falls into a dissertation. He speaks to you as if he was addressing a meeting and if he should chance to become warm in the discussion, he will say 'Gentlemen' to the person with whom he is conversing.
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In towns it is impossible to prevent men from assembling, getting excited together and forming sudden passionate resolves. Towns are like great meeting houses with all the inhabitants as members. In them the people wield immense influence over their magistrates and often carry their desires into execution without intermediaries.
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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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The foremost or indeed sole condition required in order to succeed in centralizing the supreme power in a democratic community is to love equality or to get men to believe you love it. Thus, the science of despotism, which was once so complex, has been simplified and reduced, as it were, to a single principle.
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The debates of that great assembly are frequently vague and perplexed, seeming to be dragged rather than to march, to the intended goal. Something of this sort must, I think, always happen in public democratic assemblies.
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The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.
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General ideas are no proof of the strength, but rather of the insufficiency of the human intellect.
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All around you everything is on the move.
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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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In the United States, associations are established to promote the public safety, commerce, industry, morality, and religion. There is no end which the human will despairs of attaining through the combined power of individuals united into a society.
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