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Remember that life is neither pain nor pleasure it is serious business, to be entered upon with courage and in a spirit of self-sacrifice.

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
Business
Entered
Spirit
Neither
Remember
Sacrifice
Self
Courage
Life
Serious
Pleasure
Upon
Pain

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As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: how much money will it bring in?
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The last thing abandoned by a party is its phraseology.
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The power of the periodical press is second only to that of the people.
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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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No state of society or laws can render men so much alike but that education, fortune, and tastes will interpose some differences between them and though different men may sometimes find it their interest to combine for the same purposes, they will never make it their pleasure.
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Men living in democratic times have many passions, but most of their passions either end in the love of riches, or proceed from it.
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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.
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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.
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Christianity is the companion of liberty in all its conflicts, the cradle of its infancy, and the divine source of its claims.
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Not only does democracy make every man forget his ancestors, but also clouds their view of their descendants and isolates them from their contemporaries. Each man is for ever thrown back on himself alone, and there is danger that he may be shut up in the solitude of his own heart.
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What is understood by republican government in the United States is the slow and quiet action of society upon itself.
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If ever America undergoes great revolutions, they will be brought about by the presence of the black race on the soil of the United States - that is to say, they will owe their origin not to the equality but to the inequality of conditions.
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I have an intellectual inclination for democratic institutions, but I am instinctively an aristocrat, which means that I despise and fear the masses. I passionately love liberty, legality, the respect for rights, but not democracy....liberty is my foremost passion. That is the truth.
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Lawyers belong to the people by birth and interest, and to the aristocracy by habit and taste they may be looked upon as the connecting link of the two great classes of society.
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Nations are less disposed to make revolutions in proportion as personal property is augmented and distributed among them, and as the number of those possessing it is increased.
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It is easier for the world to accept a simple lie than a complex truth.
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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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No protracted war can fail to endanger the freedom of a democratic country.
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The people reign over the American political world as God rules over the universe. It is the cause and the end of all things everything rises out of it and is absorbed back into it.
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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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