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The tie of language is perhaps the strongest and the most durable that can unite mankind.

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
Durable
Unite
Ties
Strongest
Mankind
Perhaps
Language

More quotes by Alexis de Tocqueville

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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 best laws cannot make a constitution work in spite of morals morals can turn the worst laws to advantage.
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Righteous women in their circle of influence, beginning in the home, can turn the world around.
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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
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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.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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The character of Anglo-American civilization . . . is the product . . . of two perfectly distinct elements that elsewhere have often made war with each other, but which, in America, they have succeeded in incorporating somehow into one another and combining marvelously. I mean to speak of the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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The civil jury is the most effective form of sovereignty of the people. It defies the aggressions of time and man. During the reigns of Henry VIII (1509-1547) and Elizabeth I (1158-1603), the civil jury did in reality save the liberties of England.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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As I see it, only God can be all-powerful without danger, because his wisdom and justice are always equal to his power. Thus there is no authority on earth so inherently worthy of respect, or invested with a right so sacred, that I would want to let it act without oversight or rule without impediment (p. 290).
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The main business of religions is to purify, control, and restrain that excessive and exclusive taste for well-being which men acquire in times of equality.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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Nothing seems at first sight less important than the outward form of human actions, yet there is nothing upon which men set more store: they grow used to everything except to living in a society which has not their own manners.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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On close inspection, we shall find that religion, and not fear, has ever been the cause of the long-lived prosperity of an absolute government.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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The Americans combine the notions of religion and liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive of one without the other.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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Any measure that establishes legal charity on a permanent basis and gives it an administrative form thereby creates an idle and lazy class, living at the expense of the industrial and working class.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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As the past has ceased to throw its light upon the future, the mind of man wanders in obscurity.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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I know without needing to hear the voice of the Creator that the stars trace out in space the orbits which His hand has drawn.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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We succeed in enterprises which demand the positive qualities we possess, but we excel in those which can also make use of our defects.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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Physical strength therefore is one of the first conditions of happiness and even of the existence of nations.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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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.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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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.
Alexis de Tocqueville