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There is one universal law that has been formed, or at least adoptedby the majority of mankind. That law is justice. Justice forms the cornerstone of each nation's law.

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
Form
Majority
Universal
Mankind
Nation
Least
Justice
Cornerstone
Law
Formed
Nations
Forms

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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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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.
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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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We need a new political science for a new world.
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A newspaper is an adviser who does not require to be sought, but who comes of his own accord, and talks to you briefly every day of the common wealth, without distracting you from your private affairs.
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As the past has ceased to throw its light upon the future, the mind of man wanders in obscurity.
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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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By obliging men to turn their attention to other affairs than their own, it rubs off that private selfishness which is the rust of society.
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The French under the old monarchy held it for a maxim that the king could do no wrong . The Americans entertain the same opinion with respect to the majority.... If ever the free institutions of America are destroyed, that event may be attributed to the omnipotence of the majority.
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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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There are many men of principle in both parties in America, but there is no party of principle.
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I have always noticed in politics how often men are ruined by having too good a memory.
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No men are less addicted to reverie than the citizens of a democracy.
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America is a land of wonders, in which everything is in constant motion and every change seems an improvement. No natural boundary seems to be set to the efforts of man and in his eyes what is not yet done is only what he has not attempted to do. - from Democracy in America
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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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The Union was formed by the voluntary agreement of the States and these, in uniting together, have not forfeited their Nationality, nor have they been reduced to the condition of one and the same people. If one of the States chose to withdraw its name from the contract, it would be difficult to disprove its right of doing so.
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everybody feels the evil, but no one has courage or energy enough to seek the cure
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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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The progress of democracy seems irresistible, because it is the most uniform, the most ancient and the most permanent tendency which is to be found in history.
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Nature secretly avenges herself for the constraint imposed upon her by the laws of man.
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