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What is understood by republican government in the United States is the slow and quiet action of society upon itself.
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
United
Action
States
Slow
Government
Republican
World
Quiet
Understood
Society
Upon
More quotes by Alexis de Tocqueville
We succeed in enterprises which demand the positive qualities we possess, but we excel in those which can also make use of our defects.
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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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History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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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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.
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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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A great democratic revolution is taking place in our midst.
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When a large number of organs of the press come to advance along the same track, their influence becomes almost irresistible in the long term, and public opinion, struck always from the same side, ends by yielding under their blows.
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The man who asks of freedom anything other than itself is born to be a slave.
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everybody feels the evil, but no one has courage or energy enough to seek the cure
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In the United States, associations are established to promote the public safety, commerce, industry, morality, and religion. There is no end which the human will despairs of attaining through the combined power of individuals united into a society.
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The more I view the independence of the press in its principal effects, the more I convince myself that among the moderns the independence of the press is the capital and so to speak the constitutive element of freedom.
Alexis de Tocqueville
There is no country in the world in which everything can be provided for by the laws, or in which political institutions can prove a substitute for common sense and public morality.
Alexis de Tocqueville
The man who submits to violence is debased by his compliance but when he submits to that right of authority which he acknowledges in a fellow creature, he rises in some measure above the person who give the command.
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I do not find fault with equality for drawing men into the pursuit of forbidden pleasures, but for absorbing them entirely in the search for the pleasures that are permitted.
Alexis de Tocqueville
I have seen Americans making great and sincere sacrifices for the key common good and a hundred times I have noticed that, when needs be, they almost always gave each other faithful support
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The whole life of an American is passed like a game of chance, a revolutionary crisis, or a battle.
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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.
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If men are to remain civilized or to become so, the art of associating together must grow and improve in the same ratio in which the equality of conditions is increased.
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The genius of democracies is seen not only in the great number of new words introduced but even more in the new ideas they express.
Alexis de Tocqueville
