It is their mores, then, that make the Americans of the United States…capable of maintaining the rule of democracy…. Too much importance is attached to laws and too little to mores…. I am convinced that the luckiest of geographical circumstances and the best of laws cannot maintain a constitution in spite of mores, whereas the latter can turn even the most unfavorable circumstances…to advantage…. If I have not succeeded in making the reader feel the importance I attach to the practical experience of the Americans, to their habits, laws, and, in a word, their mores, I have failed in the main object of my work. -Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in American

It is their mores, then, that make the Americans of the United States…capable of maintaining the rule of democracy…. Too much importance is attached to laws and too little to mores…. I am convinced that the luckiest of geographical circumstances and the best of laws cannot maintain a constitution in spite of mores, whereas the latter can turn even the most unfavorable circumstances…to advantage…. If I have not succeeded in making the reader feel the importance I attach to the practical experience of the Americans, to their habits, laws, and, in a word, their mores, I have failed in the main object of my work. -Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in American

– Naomi Wolf –

Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries

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