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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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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
Hand
Stars
Orbits
Space
Needing
Voice
Orbit
Hands
Trace
Without
Drawn
Creator
Hear

More quotes by Alexis de Tocqueville

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There are two things which a democratic people will always find very difficult - to begin a war and to end it.
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One of the happiest consequences of the absence of government...is the development of individual strength that inevitably follows.
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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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He [Napoleon] was as great as a man can be without morality.
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[R]eligion cannot share the material strength of the rulers without being burdened with some of the animosity roused against them.
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History, it is easily perceived, is a picture-gallery containing a host of copies and very few originals.
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It is easy to see that, even in the freedom of early youth, an American girl never quite loses control of herself she enjoys all permitted pleasures without losing her head about any of them, and her reason never lets the reins go, though it may often seem to let them flap.
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When the people rule, they must be rendered happy, or they will overturn the state.
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I cannot believe that a republic could subsist if the influence of the lawyers in public business did not increase in proportion to the power of the people.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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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.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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No protracted war can fail to endanger the freedom of a democratic country.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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The principle of equality does not destroy the imagination, but lowers its flight to the level of the earth.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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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.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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Freedom sees in religion the companion of its struggles and its triumphs, the cradle of its infancy, the divine source of its rights. It considers religion as the safeguard of mores and mores as the guarantee of laws and the pledge of its duration.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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In democratic ages men rarely sacrifice themselves for another, but they show a general compassion for all the human race. One never sees them inflict pointless suffering, and they are glad to relieve the sorrows of others when they can do so without much trouble to themselves. They are not disinterested, but they are gentle.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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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.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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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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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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The last thing abandoned by a party is its phraseology.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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General ideas are no proof of the strength, but rather of the insufficiency of the human intellect.
Alexis de Tocqueville