“Americans combine to give fêtes, found seminaries, build churches, distribute books, and send missionaries to the antipodes. Hospitals, prisons, and schools take shape in that way. Finally, if they want to proclaim a truth or propagate some feeling by the encouragement of a great example, they form an association. In every case, at the head of any new undertaking, where in France you would find the government or in England some territorial magnate, in the United States you are sure to find an association. I have come across several types of association in America of which, I confess, I had not previously the slightest conception, and I have often admired the extreme skill they show in proposing a common object for the exertions of very many and in inducing them voluntarily to pursue it.”

— Alexis De Tocqueville , book Democracy in America

Book Two, Chapter V.
Democracy in America, Volume II (1840), Book Two

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Americans combine to give fêtes, found seminaries, build churches, distribute books, and send missionaries to the antip…" by Alexis De Tocqueville?

Alexis De Tocqueville 135

French political thinker and historian 1805–1859

Related quotes

“I had been trying to find a publisher who would put some of my stuff into book form, but I met with no encouragement. Every well-known publisher in the United States turned down Tarzan of the Apes, including A. C. McClurg & Co., who finally issued it, my first story in book form.”

Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875–1950) American writer

How I Wrote the Tarzan Books (1929)

“Minnesota is a state of public-spirited and polite people, where you can get a good cappucino and eat Thai food and find any book you want and yet live on a quiet tree-lined street with a backyard and send your kids to public school. When a state this good hits the jackpot, it can only be an inspiration to everybody.”

Garrison Keillor (1942) American radio host and writer

"Minnesota's Sensible Plan, TIME (11 September 1995)

“Some painters [of the New York School], including myself, do not care what chair they are sitting on. It does not even have to be a comfortable one. They are too nervous to find out where they ought to sit. They do not want to 'sit in style'. Rather, they have found that painting - any kind of painting, any style of painting - to be painting at all, in fact - is a way of living today, a style of living, so to speak. That is where they form of it lies. It is exactly in its uselessness that it is free. Those artists do not want to conform. They only want to be inspired.”

Willem de Kooning (1904–1997) Dutch painter

Source: De Kooning's speech 'What Abstract Art means to me' on the symposium 'What is Abstract At' - at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 5 February, 1951, n.p.

“You trust them (white Americans), and I don't. You studied what he wanted you to learn about him in schools. I studied him in the streets and in prison, where you see the truth.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965)

“What people "want" is a function of what they learn is available. If you wish to sell something, you'd better understand that you can't give people what they want in the market today, because what they want today is what they can already get. You have to discover what they really want, and find some way to give that physical shape.”

Erik Naggum (1965–2009) Norwegian computer programmer

Re: creation of lisp machine/lispOS http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/c2fd86a7e43ac7aa (Usenet article).
Usenet articles, Miscellaneous

“Happy Valentines Day to those who have found love, in whatever shape or form, and to those who are still hunting, don’t give up. If you feel bad, send yourself a card. You must be worth it…”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

“Within our system of government every American has a right and duty to help shape the future course of the United States.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Presidency (1977–1981), Farewell Address (1981)
Context: Within our system of government every American has a right and duty to help shape the future course of the United States.
Thoughtful criticism and close scrutiny of all government officials by the press and the public are an important part of our democratic society. Now as in our past, only the understanding and involvement of the people through full and open debate can help to avoid serious mistakes and assure the continued dignity and safety of the nation.

“In the United States dramatically, here fortunately much less so, the book store as we have known it is dying. In the United States it is now largely an emporium, featuring music, records, Christmas cards, a large range fo semi-cultural and kitsch products with books fighting for their actual spatial lives. In some of the great university towns such as New Haven, or Princeton, within the past decade, the last good book stores have had to close, and what we have now are text book emporia which are not book stores, but store-houses bracketed according to set reading lists: in other words—where there is none of the genius of waste which a great book store has, where you cannot find what you are not looking for, which is the very essence of a book store.”

George Steiner (1929–2020) American writer

Do Books Matter? (ed. Brian Baumfield), ISBN 0705700143, p. 27.
Do Books Matter?

“He had wanted so hard to Escape, to find the stars. And all he had found was a new prison.”

Catherine Fisher book Sapphique

Source: Sapphique

“Now before we do any digging around in that blond head of yours to find out the truth, I suggest you cool your temper. And I know just where you can do that best.”
Jace blinked. “Are you sending me to my room?”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Alexis De Tocqueville 135

Related quotes

Related topics