Equality

"Our contemporaries are incessantly racked by two inimical passions: they feel the need to be lead and they wish to remain free. Not being able to destroy either one of these contrary instricts, they strive to satisfy both at the same time. They imagine a unique power, tutleary, all powerful, but elected by citizens. They combine centralization and the sovereignty of the people. That gives them some respite. They console themselves for being in tutelage by thinking that they themselves have chosen their schoolmasters. Each individual allows himself to be attached because he sees that it is not a man or a class, but the people themselves that hold the end of the chain."

Anyone who knows anything about the history of this country, how and why we declared our independance, will quickly be able to see the wisdom in Tocqueville's words here. His insight into the American mind is startling.