Source: Nemesis Games (2015), Chapter 21 (p. 223)
“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.”
Source: Democracy in America, Volume I (1835), Chapter XV-IXX, Chapter XVI.
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Alexis De Tocqueville 135
French political thinker and historian 1805–1859Related quotes
1860s, Second State of the Union address (1862)
Context: A nation may be said to consist of its territory, its people, and its laws. The territory is the only part which is of certain durability. "One generation passeth away and another generation cometh, but the earth abideth forever." It is of the first importance to duly consider and estimate this ever-enduring part.
Part III. Où mènent les mauvais Chemins (The Ends of Evil Ways), "Ce qu'est un Juge d'instruction pour ceux qui n'en ont pas" ("What a Judge Is for Those Who Do Not Have One") (chapter title).
Splendours and Miseries of Courtesans (1838-1847)
Original: (fr) La loi est bonne, elle est nécessaire, l'exécution en est mauvaise, et les mœurs jugent les lois d'après la manière dont elles s'exécutent.
“Manners are the hypocrisy of nations.”
Les moeurs sont l'hypocrisie des nations.
Part I, Meditation IV: Of the Virtuous Woman http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Physiology_of_Marriage/Part_1/Med_4, aphorism XVI.
Physiology of Marriage (1829)
Source: Speech on Reform Bill of 1867, Edinburgh, Scotland (29 October 1867); quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume II. 1860–1881 (London: John Murray, 1929), p. 291.
Attributed in "Successful Cemetery Advertising" in The American Cemetery (March 1938), p. 13; reported as unverified in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989)
Disputed
1860s, The Conduct of Life (1860), Behavior