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Laws are always unstable unless they are founded on the manners of a nation and manners are the only durable and resisting power in a people.

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
People
Manners
Laws
Unless
Nation
Law
Durable
Nations
Unstable
Power
Resisting
Always
Founded

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[T]he main evil of the present democratic institutions of the united states does not raise, as is often asserted in Europe, from their weakness, but from their irresistible strength. I am not so much alarmed at the excessive liberty which reigns in that country as at the inadequate securities which one finds there against tyranny.
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All revolutions more or less threaten the tenure of property: but most of those who live in democratic countries are possessed of property - not only are they possessed of property but they live in the condition of men who set the greatest store upon their property.
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Trade is the natural enemy of all violent passions. Trade loves moderation, delights in compromise, and is most careful to avoid anger. It is patient, supple, and insinuating, only resorting to extreme measures in cases of absolute necessity.
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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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Nobody is going to occupy a place higher than I.
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Nature secretly avenges herself for the constraint imposed upon her by the laws of man.
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I am unaware of his plans but I shall never stop believing in them because I cannot fathom them and I prefer to mistrust my own intellectual capacities than his justice.
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The position of the Americans is quite exceptional, and it may be believed that no democratic people will ever be placed in a similar one.
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In the United States, if a political character attacks a sect, this may not prevent even the partisans of that very sect, from supporting him but if he attacks all the sects together, every one abandons him and he remains alone.
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When, after having examined in detail the organization of the Supreme Court, one comes to consider in sum the prerogatives that have been given it, one discovers without difficulty that a more immense judicial power has never been constituted in any people.
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You may be sure that if you succeed in bringing your audience into the presence of something that affects them, they will not care by what road you brought them there and they will never reproach you for having excited their emotions in spite of dramatic rules.
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The Americans make associations to give entertainment, to found seminaries, to build inns, to construct churches, to diffuse books, to send missionaries to the antipodes in this manner, they found hospitals, prisons and schools.
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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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The best laws cannot make a constitution work in spite of morals morals can turn the worst laws to advantage.
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Democratic institutions generally give men a lofty notion of their country and themselves.
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A newspaper is an adviser who does not require to be sought, but who comes of his own accord, and talks to you briefly every day of the common wealth, without distracting you from your private affairs.
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Amongst democratic nations, each new generation is a new people.
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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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No men are less addicted to reverie than the citizens of a democracy.
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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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