French - Historian | July 29, 1805 - April 16, 1859
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.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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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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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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It is the dissimilarities and inequalities among men which give rise to the notion of honor; as such differences become less, it grows feeble; and when they disappear, it will vanish too.
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In America the majority raises formidable barriers around the liberty of opinion; within these barriers an author may write what he pleases, but woe to him if he goes beyond them.
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In other words, 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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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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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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There are two things which a democratic people will always find very difficult - to begin a war and to end it.
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In a revolution, as in a novel, the most difficult part to invent is the end.
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No protracted war can fail to endanger the freedom of a democratic country.
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We succeed in enterprises which demand the positive qualities we possess, but we excel in those which can also make use of our defects.
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