The happy and the powerful do not go into exile, and there are no surer guarantees of equality among men than poverty and misfortune. - Alexis de Tocqueville

There are two things which a democratic people will always find very difficult - to begin a war and to end it.

It is easy to see that, even in the freedom of early youth, an American girl never quite loses control of herself; she enjoys all permitted pleasures without losing her head about any of them, and her reason never lets the reins go, though it may often seem to let them flap.

De la supériorité des mœurs sur les lois (1831) Oeuvres complètes, vol. VIII, p. 286.