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In countries where associations are free, secret societies are unknown. In America there are factions, but no conspiracies.

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
Association
Unknown
Countries
Secret
Conspiracies
Free
Associations
America
Factions
Country
Conspiracy
Societies

More quotes by Alexis de Tocqueville

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The only authors whom I acknowledge as American are the journalists. They, indeed, are not great writers, but they speak the language of their countrymen, and make themselves heard by them.
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Nations, as well as man, almost always betray the most prominent features of their future destiny in their earliest years.
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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.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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If I were asked ... to what the singular prosperity and growing strength of Americans ought mainly to be attributed, I should reply: To the superiority of their women.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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The foremost or indeed sole condition required in order to succeed in centralizing the supreme power in a democratic community is to love equality or to get men to believe you love it. Thus, the science of despotism, which was once so complex, has been simplified and reduced, as it were, to a single principle.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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The happy and powerful do not go into exile, and there are no surer guarantees of equality among men than poverty and misfortune.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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No stigma attaches to the love of money in America, and provided it does not exceed the bounds imposed by public order, it is held in honor. The American will describe as noble and estimable ambition that our medieval ancestors would have called base cupidity.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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I have always noticed in politics how often men are ruined by having too good a memory.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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The public, therefore, among a democratic people, has a singular power, which aristocratic nations cannot conceive for it does not persuade others to its beliefs, but it imposes them and makes them permeate the thinking of everyone by a sort of enormous pressure of the mind of all upon the individual intelligence.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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I must say that I have seen Americans make great and real sacrifices to the public welfare and have noticed a hundred instances in which they hardly ever failed to lend faithful support to one another.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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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.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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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.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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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.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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It is easier for the world to accept a simple lie than a complex truth.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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If there ever are great revolutions there, they will be caused by the presence of the blacks upon American soil.
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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When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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The electors see their representative not only as a legislator for the state but also as the natural protector of local interests in the legislature indeed, they almost seem to think that he has a power of attorney to represent each constituent, and they trust him to be as eager in their private interests as in those of the country.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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Men will not receive the truth from their enemies, and it is seldom offered to them by their friends.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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Religion, which never intervenes directly in the government of American society, should therefore be considered as the first of their political institutions
Alexis de Tocqueville