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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.

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
Sure
Lord
United
Undertaking
States
Undertakings
Government
Association
Find
France
Great
England
Would
Head

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The civil jury is the most effective form of sovereignty of the people. It defies the aggressions of time and man. During the reigns of Henry VIII (1509-1547) and Elizabeth I (1158-1603), the civil jury did in reality save the liberties of England.
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On this waterlogged landscape....are scattered palaces and hovels....It is here that the human spirit becomes perfect, and at the same time brutalised, that civilisation produces its marvels and that civilised man returns to the savage.
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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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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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The best laws cannot make a constitution work in spite of morals morals can turn the worst laws to advantage. That is a commonplace truth, but one to which my studies are always bringing me back. It is the central point in my conception. I see it at the end of all my reflections.
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He who seeks freedom for anything but freedom's self is made to be a slave.
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Those that despise people will never get the best out of others and themselves.
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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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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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If an American was condemned to confine his activity to his own affairs, he would be robbed of one half of his existence.
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Men cannot abandon their religious faith without a kind of aberration of intellect and a sort of violent distortion of their true nature they are invincibly brought back to more pious sentiments. Unbelief is an accident, and faith is the only permanent state of mankind.
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So many of my thoughts and feelings are shared by the English that England has turned into a second native land of the mind for me.
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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 character of Anglo-American civilization . . . is the product . . . of two perfectly distinct elements that elsewhere have often made war with each other, but which, in America, they have succeeded in incorporating somehow into one another and combining marvelously. I mean to speak of the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom.
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There is hardly a political question in the United States which does not sooner or later turn into a judicial one.
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The whole life of an American is passed like a game of chance, a revolutionary crisis, or a battle.
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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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In countries where associations are free, secret societies are unknown. In America there are factions, but no conspiracies.
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Of all nations, those submit to civilization with the most difficulty which habitually live by the chase.
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Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.... The subjection of individuals will increase amongst democratic nations, not only in the same proportion as their equality, but in the same proportion as their ignorance.
Alexis de Tocqueville