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Men seldom take the opinion of their equal, or of a man like themselves, upon trust.

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
Opinion
Upon
Take
Men
Like
Seldom
Equal
Trust

More quotes by Alexis de Tocqueville

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What chiefly diverts the men of democracies from lofty ambition is not the scantiness of their fortunes, but the vehemence of the exertions they daily make to improve them.
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The people reign over the American political world as God rules over the universe. It is the cause and the end of all things everything rises out of it and is absorbed back into it.
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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
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In politics a community of hatred is almost always the foundation of friendships.
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The aspect of American society is animated, because men and things are always changing but it is monotonous, because all the changes are alike.
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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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When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness.
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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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Christianity has therefore retained a strong hold on the public mind in America... In the United States... Christianity itself is a fact so irresistibly established, that no one undertakes either to attack or to defend it.
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Not only does democracy make every man forget his ancestors, but also clouds their view of their descendants and isolates them from their contemporaries. Each man is for ever thrown back on himself alone, and there is danger that he may be shut up in the solitude of his own heart.
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The most perilous moment for a bad government is when it seeks to mend its ways. Only consummate statecraft can enable a king to save his throne when, after a long spell of oppression, he sets out to improve the lot of his subjects.
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Among the laws controlling human societies there is one more precise and clearer, it seems to me, than all the others. If men are to remain civilized or to become civilized, the art of association must develop and improve among them at the same speed as equality of conditions spreads.
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He who seeks freedom for anything but freedom's self is made to be a slave.
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The health of a democratic society may be measured by the quality of functions performed by private citizens.
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The more alike men are, the weaker each feels in the face of all.
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In America a woman loses her independence for ever in the bonds of matrimony. While there is less constraint on girls there than anywhere else, a wife submits to stricter obligations. For the former, her father's house is a home of freedom and pleasure for the latter, her husband's is almost a cloister.
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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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Nothing is so dangerous as that of violence employed by well-meaning people for beneficial objects.
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The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.
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What is not yet done is only what we have not yet attempted to do.
Alexis de Tocqueville