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When the reality of power has been surrendered, it's playing a dangerous game to seek to retain the appearance of it the external aspect of vigor can sometimes support a debilitated body, but most often it manages to deal it the final blow.

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
Body
Playing
Finals
Sometimes
Dangerous
Manage
Game
Appearance
Manages
Support
Blow
Surrendered
Games
Aspect
Vigor
Often
Seek
Retain
Reality
Deal
External
Power
Deals
Final

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One of the happiest consequences of the absence of government...is the development of individual strength that inevitably follows.
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A man's admiration of absolute government is proportionate to the contempt he feels for those around him.
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In democratic countries as well as elsewhere most of the branches of productive industry are carried on at a small cost by men little removed by their wealth or education above the level of those whom they employ.
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Democratic communities have a natural taste for freedom: left to themselves they will seek it, cherish it, and view any deprivation of it with regret. But for equality their passion is ardent, insatiable, incessant, invincible: they call for equality in freedom and if they cannot obtain that, they still call for equality in slavery.
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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.
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There is hardly a congressman prepared to go home until he has at least one speech printed and sent to his constituents, and he won't let anybody interrupt his harangue until he has made all his useful suggestions about the 24 states of the Union, and especially the district he represents.
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Those that despise people will never get the best out of others and themselves.
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The last thing a political party gives up is its vocabulary.
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When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness.
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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 taste which men have for liberty and that which they feel for equality are, in fact, two different things...among democratic nations they are two unequal things.
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I am far from denying that newspapers in democratic countries lead citizens to do very ill-considered things in common but without newspapers there would be hardly any common action at all. So they mend many more ills than they cause.
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The Americans combine the notions of religion and liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive of one without the other.
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Military discipline is merely a perfection of social servitude.
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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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It is an axiom of political science in the United States that the sole means of neutralizing the effects of newspapers is to multiply their number.
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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.
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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 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.
Alexis de Tocqueville