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But what most astonishes me in the United States, is not so much the marvelous grandeur of some undertakings, as the innumerable multitude of small ones.

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
Small
Astonishes
United
Innumerable
America
Undertakings
States
Multitude
Much
Grandeur
Multitudes
Marvelous
Ones

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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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A great democratic revolution is taking place in our midst.
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There are at the present time two great nations in the world - allude to the Russians and the Americans. All other nations seem to have nearly reached their national limits, and have only to maintain their power these alone are proceeding along a path to which no limit can be perceived.
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In democratic countries as well as elsewhere most of the branches of productive industry are carried on at a small cost by men little removed by their wealth or education above the level of those whom they employ.
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Slavery...dishonors labor. It introduces idleness into society, and with idleness, ignorance and pride, luxury and distress. It enervates the powers of the mind and benumbs the activity of man.
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Whatever may be the general endeavor of a community to render its members equal and alike, the personal pride of individuals will always seek to rise above the line, and to form somewhere an inequality to their own advantage.
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Democracy does not create strong ties between people. But it does make living together easier.
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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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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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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.
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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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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 power of the periodical press is second only to that of the people.
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The tie of language is perhaps the strongest and the most durable that can unite mankind.
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He who seeks freedom for anything but freedom's self is made to be a slave.
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However energetically society in general may strive to make all the citizens equal and alike, the personal pride of each individual will always make him try to escape from the common level, and he will form some inequality somewhere to his own profit.
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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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In America, more than anywhere else in the world, care has been taken constantly to trace clearly distinct spheres of action for the two sexes, and both are required to keep in step, but along paths that are never the same.
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One has freedom as the principal means of action the other has servitude. Their . . . paths [are] diverse nevertheless, each seems called by some secret design of Providence one day to hold in its hands the destinies of half the world.
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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