“When the taste for physical gratifications among them has grown more rapidly than their education . . . the time will come when men are carried away and lose all self-restraint . . . . It is not necessary to do violence to such a people in order to strip them of the rights they enjoy; they themselves willingly loosen their hold. . . . they neglect their chief business which is to remain their own masters.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America Volume 2 (1840)

“The health of a democratic society may be measured by the quality of functions performed by private citizens.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1835)