| | 1 | Author: | Tocqueville, Alexis de, 1805-1859. | Add | | | Title: | democracy in America, volume 1  | | | | Published: | 2000 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | Amongst the novel objects that attracted my attention during
my stay in the United States, nothing struck me more forcibly
than the general equality of conditions. I readily discovered
the prodigious influence which this primary fact exercises on the
whole course of society, by giving a certain direction to public
opinion, and a certain tenor to the laws; by imparting new maxims
to the governing powers, and peculiar habits to the governed. I
speedily perceived that the influence of this fact extends far
beyond the political character and the laws of the country, and
that it has no less empire over civil society than over the
Government; it creates opinions, engenders sentiments, suggests
the ordinary practices of life, and modifies whatever it does not
produce. The more I advanced in the study of American society,
the more I perceived that the equality of conditions is the
fundamental fact from which all others seem to be derived, and
the central point at which all my observations constantly
terminated. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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