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

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To remain silent is the most useful service that a mediocre speaker can render to the public good.
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In no other country in the world is the love of property keener or more alert than in the United States, and nowhere else does the majority display less inclination toward doctrines which in any way threaten the way property is owned.
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When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness.
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I must say that I have seen Americans make great and real sacrifices to the public welfare and have noticed a hundred instances in which they hardly ever failed to lend faithful support to one another.
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We can state with conviction, therefore, that a man's support for absolute government is in direct proportion to the contempt he feels for his country.
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In America, more than anywhere else in the world, care has been taken constantly to trace clearly distinct spheres of action for the two sexes, and both are required to keep in step, but along paths that are never the same.
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Nothing is quite so wretchedly corrupt as an aristocracy which has lost its power but kept its wealth and which still has endless leisure to devote to nothing but banal enjoyments. All its great thoughts and passionate energy are things of the past, and nothing but a host of petty, gnawing vices now cling to it like worms to a corpse.
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The main business of religions is to purify, control, and restrain that excessive and exclusive taste for well-being which men acquire in times of equality.
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Slavery...dishonors labor. It introduces idleness into society, and with idleness, ignorance and pride, luxury and distress. It enervates the powers of the mind and benumbs the activity of man.
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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.
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To get the inestimable good that freedom of the press assures one must know how to submit to the inevitable evil it gives rise to.
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Nobody is going to occupy a place higher than I.
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Nature secretly avenges herself for the constraint imposed upon her by the laws of man.
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A state of equality is perhaps less elevated, but it is more just and its justice constitutes its greatness and beauty.
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When a large number of organs of the press come to advance along the same track, their influence becomes almost irresistible in the long term, and public opinion, struck always from the same side, ends by yielding under their blows.
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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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If there ever are great revolutions there, they will be caused by the presence of the blacks upon American soil.
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The last thing a political party gives up is its vocabulary.
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They all attributed the peaceful dominion of religion in their country mainly to the separation of church and state. I do not hesitate to affirm that during my stay in America I did not meet a single individual, of the clergy or the laity, who was not of the same opinion on this point.
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In the United States, if a political character attacks a sect, this may not prevent even the partisans of that very sect, from supporting him but if he attacks all the sects together, every one abandons him and he remains alone.
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