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Equality is a slogan based on envy. It signifies in the heart of every republican: Nobody is going to occupy a place higher than I.

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
Higher
Slogan
Place
Slogans
Heart
Occupy
Going
Equality
Every
Envy
Based
Republican
Nobody
Signifies

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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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Life is to be entered upon with courage.
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America is a country where they have freedom of speech but everyone says the same thing.
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The principle of equality does not destroy the imagination, but lowers its flight to the level of the earth.
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It must not be forgotten that it is especially dangerous to enslave men in the minor details of life. For my part, I should be inclined to think freedom less necessary in the great things than in the little ones, if it were possible to be secure of the one without the other.
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In America one of the first things done in a new State is to make the post go there in the forests of Michigan there is no cabin so isolated, no valley so wild, but that letters and newspapers arrive at least once a week.
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It is indeed difficult to imagine how men who have entirely renounced the habit of managing their own affairs could be successful in choosing those who ought to lead them. It is impossible to believe that a liberal, energetic, and wise government can ever emerge from the ballots of a nation of servants.
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Democracy does not create strong ties between people. But it does make living together easier.
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Those who prize freedom only for the material benefits it offers have never kept it for long.
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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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The man who asks of freedom anything other than itself is born to be a slave.
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America is great because she is good.
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The French want no-one to be their superior. The English want inferiors. The Frenchman constantly raises his eyes above him with anxiety. The Englishman lowers his beneath him with satisfaction.
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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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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.
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I considered mores to be one of the great general causes responsible for the maintenance of a democratic republic . . . the term mores . . . meaning . . . habits of the heart.
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I do not know if the people of the United States would vote for superior men if they ran for office, but there can be no doubt that such men do not run.
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I studied the Koran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Muhammad.
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I see no clear reason why the doctrine of self-interest properly understood should turn men away from religious beliefs.
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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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