{"author":"Alexis de Tocqueville","author_id":"Alexis+de+Tocqueville","total_quotes":115,"quotes":[{"text":"We succeed in enterprises which demand the positive qualities we possess  but we excel in those which can also make use of our defects.","author":"Alexis de Tocqueville","tags":["right"],"id":12014,"author_id":"Alexis+de+Tocqueville"},{"text":"America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.","author":"Alexis de Tocqueville","tags":["america","misattributed"],"id":14318,"author_id":"Alexis+de+Tocqueville"},{"text":"The most dangerous moment for a bad government is when it begins to reform.","author":"Alexis de Tocqueville","tags":["revolution","reform"],"id":29882,"author_id":"Alexis+de+Tocqueville"},{"text":"Now, these eager and apprehensive men of small property constitute the class which is constantly increased by the equality of conditions. Hence, in democratic communities, the majority of the people do not clearly see what they have to gain by a revolution, but they continually and in a thousand ways feel that they might lose by one.","author":"Alexis de Tocqueville","tags":["1840","complacency","democracy","ows","revolution"],"id":34309,"author_id":"Alexis+de+Tocqueville"},{"text":"On close inspection, we shall find that religion, and not fear, has ever been the cause of the long-lived prosperity of an absolute government.","author":"Alexis de Tocqueville","tags":["fear","government","religion"],"id":38543,"author_id":"Alexis+de+Tocqueville"},{"text":"History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.","author":"Alexis de Tocqueville","tags":["insightful"],"id":40704,"author_id":"Alexis+de+Tocqueville"},{"text":"I follow the course marked out by my principles and, what is more, enjoy a deep and noble pleasure in following it. You deeply despise the human race, at least our part of it; you think it not only fallen but incapable of ever rising again... For my part, as I feel neither the right nor the wish to entertain such opinions of my species and my country, I think it is not necessary to despair of them. In my opinion, human societies, like individuals, amount to something only in liberty...And God forbid that my mind should ever be crossed by the thought that it is necessary to despair of success... You will allow me to have less confidence in your teaching than in the goodness and justice of God.","author":"Alexis de Tocqueville","tags":["education","principles"],"id":41508,"author_id":"Alexis+de+Tocqueville"},{"text":"Slavery received, but the prejudice to which it has given birth remains stationary.","author":"Alexis de Tocqueville","tags":["bias","perspective","pride"],"id":45866,"author_id":"Alexis+de+Tocqueville"},{"text":"The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democracy, from beneath which the old aristocratic colors sometimes peep.","author":"Alexis de Tocqueville","tags":["culture","elitism"],"id":52287,"author_id":"Alexis+de+Tocqueville"},{"text":"The greatest difficulty in antiquity with that of altering the law; among the moderns, it is that of altering the manners.","author":"Alexis de Tocqueville","tags":["assumptions","bias","conventional-wisdom","culture","prejudice"],"id":54821,"author_id":"Alexis+de+Tocqueville"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":115,"pages":12,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}