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The more government takes the place of associations, the more will individuals lose the idea of forming associations and need the government to come to their help. That is a vicious circle of cause and effect.
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
Come
Causes
Circles
Need
Help
Individuals
Needs
Idea
Effect
Individual
Effects
Associations
Helping
Cause
Forming
Place
Lose
Vicious
Government
Loses
Circle
Ideas
Takes
Association
More quotes by Alexis de Tocqueville
Those which we call necessary institutions are simply no more than institutions to which we have become accustomed.
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All revolutions more or less threaten the tenure of property: but most of those who live in democratic countries are possessed of property - not only are they possessed of property but they live in the condition of men who set the greatest store upon their property.
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When I refuse to obey an unjust law, I do not contest the right of the majority to command, but I simply appeal from the sovereignty of the people to the sovereignty of mankind.
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There is one universal law that has been formed, or at least adoptedby the majority of mankind. That law is justice. Justice forms the cornerstone of each nation's law.
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Laws are always unstable unless they are founded on the manners of a nation and manners are the only durable and resisting power in a people.
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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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everybody feels the evil, but no one has courage or energy enough to seek the cure
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The debates of that great assembly are frequently vague and perplexed, seeming to be dragged rather than to march, to the intended goal. Something of this sort must, I think, always happen in public democratic assemblies.
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The genius of democracies is seen not only in the great number of new words introduced but even more in the new ideas they express.
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Democracy does not create strong ties between people. But it does make living together easier.
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There is hardly a pioneer's hut which does not contain a few odd volumes of Shakespeare. I remember reading the feudal drama of Henry V for the first time in a log cabin.
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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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The last thing a political party gives up is its vocabulary.
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When, after having examined in detail the organization of the Supreme Court, one comes to consider in sum the prerogatives that have been given it, one discovers without difficulty that a more immense judicial power has never been constituted in any people.
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All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and shortest means to accomplish it.
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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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When fortune has been abolished, when every profession is open to everyone, an ambitious man may think it is easy to launch himself on a great career and feel that he has been called to no common destiny. But this is a delusion which experience quickly corrects.
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How could a society escape destruction if, when political ties are relaxed, moral ties are not tightened, and what can be done with a people master of itself if it not subject to God?
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Society is endangered not by the great profligacy of a few, but by the laxity of morals amongst all.
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The will of the nation is one of those phrases most widely abused by schemers and tyrants of all ages.
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