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I cannot believe that a republic could subsist if the influence of the lawyers in public business did not increase in proportion to the power of the people.

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
Increase
Influence
Public
Business
Subsist
Cannot
Lawyers
Power
Republic
Believe
Proportion
People
Lawyer

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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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Two things in America are astonishing: the changeableness of most human behavior and the strange stability of certain principles. Men are constantly on the move, but the spirit of humanity seems almost unmoved.
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At the head of any new undertaking where in France you would find the government, or in England some great lord, in the United States you are sure to find an association.
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History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.
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Among the droves of men with political ambitions in the United States, I found very few with that virile candor, that manly independence of thought, that often distinguished Americans in earlier times and that is invariably the preeminent trait of great characters wherever it exists.
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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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Nobody is going to occupy a place higher than I.
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Remember that life is neither pain nor pleasure it is serious business, to be entered upon with courage and in a spirit of self-sacrifice.
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Democracy does not create strong ties between people. But it does make living together easier.
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In America, conscription is unknown men are enlisted for payment. Compulsory recruitment is so alien to the ideas and so foreign to the customs of the people of the United States that I doubt whether they would ever dare to introduce it into their law.
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Nothing is more wonderful than the art of being free, but nothing is harder to learn how to use than freedom.
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[T]he main evil of the present democratic institutions of the united states does not raise, as is often asserted in Europe, from their weakness, but from their irresistible strength. I am not so much alarmed at the excessive liberty which reigns in that country as at the inadequate securities which one finds there against tyranny.
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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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The health of a democratic society may be measured by the quality of functions performed by private citizens.
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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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I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America.
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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.
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All around you everything is on the move.
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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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I should have loved freedom, I believe, at all times, but in the time in which we live I am ready to worship it.
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