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So many of my thoughts and feelings are shared by the English that England has turned into a second native land of the mind for me.

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
Second
Land
Shared
Feelings
Native
Many
English
Mind
Turned
England
Thoughts

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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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everybody feels the evil, but no one has courage or energy enough to seek the cure
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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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The tie of language is perhaps the strongest and the most durable that can unite mankind.
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In a revolution, as in a novel, the most difficult part to invent is the end.
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As for me, I am deeply a democrat this is why I am in no way a socialist. Democracy and socialism cannot go together. You can't have it both ways. Socialism is a new form of slavery.
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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.
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The Indian knew how to live without wants, to suffer without complaint, and to die singing.
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America is a land of wonders, in which everything is in constant motion and every change seems an improvement.
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To commit violent and unjust acts, it is not enough for a government to have the will or even the power the habits, ideas and passions of the time must lend themselves to their committal.
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I know of no other country where love of money has such a grip on men's hearts or where stronger scorn is expressed for the theory of permanent equality of property
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America is great because she is good.
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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.
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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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General ideas are no proof of the strength, but rather of the insufficiency of the human intellect.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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Despotism often presents itself as the repairer of all the ills suffered, the support of just rights, defender of the oppressed, and founder of order.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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Comfort becomes a goal when distinctions of rank are abolished and privileges destroyed.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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In democratic centuries, on the contrary, when the duties of each individual toward the species are much clearer, devotion toward one man becomes rarer: the bond of human affections is extended and loosened.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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They all attributed the peaceful dominion of religion in their country mainly to the separation of church and state. I do not hesitate to affirm that during my stay in America I did not meet a single individual, of the clergy or the laity, who was not of the same opinion on this point.
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It is far more important to resist apathy than anarchy or despotism, for apathy can give rise, almost indifferently, to either one.
Alexis de Tocqueville