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A democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it.
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The public, therefore, among a democratic people, has a singular power, which aristocratic nations cannot conceive; for it does not persuade others to its beliefs, but it imposes them and makes them permeate the thinking of everyone by a sort of enormous pressure of the mind of all upon the individual intelligence.
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Despots themselves do not deny that freedom is excellent; only they desire it for themselves alone, and they maintain that everyone else is altogether unworthy of it.
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When a nation abolishes aristocracy, centralization follows as a matter of course.
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I have come across men of letters who have written history without taking part in public affairs, and politicians who have concerned themselves with producing events without thinking about them. I have observed that the first are always inclined to find general causes whereas the second, living in the midst of disconnected daily facts, are prone to imagine that everything is attributable to particular incidents, and that the wires they pull are the same as those that move the world. It is to be presumed that both are equally deceived.
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The English or American lawyer investigates what was done, the French lawyer what was most likely intended. One wants decisions; the other, reasons.
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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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One has freedom as the principal means of action; the other has servitude. Their... paths [are] diverse; nevertheless, each seems called by some secret design of Providence one day to hold in its hands the destinies of half the world.
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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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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 example is so dangerous as that of violence employed by well-meaning people for beneficial objects.
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The Americans combine the notions of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other; and with them this conviction does not spring from that barren traditionary faith which seems to vegetate in the soul rather than to live.
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The tie of language is perhaps the strongest and the most durable that can unite mankind.
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The only substantial difference between the custom of those days and our own resides in the price paid for office. Then they were sold by government, now they are bestowed; it is no longer necessary to pay money; the object can be attained by selling one's soul.
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What is understood by republican government in the United States is the slow and quiet action of society upon itself.
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As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: how much money will it bring in?
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You may set the Negro free, but you cannot make him otherwise than an alien to the European. Nor is this all we scarcely acknowledge the common features of humanity in this stranger whom slavery has brought among us. His physiognomy is to our eyes hideous, his understanding weak, his tastes low; and we are almost inclined to look upon him as a being intermediate between man and the brutes.
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Never was any such event [the French Revolution], stemming from factors so far back in the past, so inevitable yet so completely unforeseen.
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I am unaware of his plans but I shall never stop believing in them because I cannot fathom them and I prefer to mistrust my own intellectual capacities than his justice.
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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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They certainly are not great writers, but they speak their country's language and they make themselves heard.
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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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Democratic nations…will habitually prefer the useful to the beautiful, and they will require that the beautiful be useful.
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America is a land of wonders, in which everything is in constant motion and every change seems an improvement. … No natural boundary seems to be set to the efforts of man; and in his eyes, what is not yet done is only what he has not yet attempted to do.
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What most astonishes me in the United States, is not so much the marvelous grandeur of some undertakings, as the innumerable multitude of small ones.
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We owe something to extravagance, for thrift and adventure seldom go hand in hand.
Lady Randolph Churchill
Alexis de Tocqueville
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Born:
July 29, 1805
Died:
April 16, 1859
(aged 53)
Bio:
Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville was a French political thinker and historian best known for his works Democracy in America and The Old Regime and the Revolution.
Known for:
Democracy in America (1835)
The Old Regime and the Revolution (1856)
Memoir on Pauperism
Ancien Regime and the Revolution
Most used words:
men
states
people
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democratic
freedom
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