“ Variety is disappearing from the human race; the same ways of acting, thinking, and feeling are to be met with all over the world. ”
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1840). copy citation
Author | Alexis de Tocqueville |
---|---|
Source | Democracy in America |
Topic | feelings variety |
Date | 1840 |
Language | English |
Reference | |
Note | Translated by Henry Reeve |
Weblink | http://www.gutenberg.org/files/816/816-h/816-h.htm |
Context
“It may be said that it is the vehemence of their desires which makes the Americans so methodical; it perturbs their minds, but it disciplines their lives.
The remark I here apply to America may indeed be addressed to almost all our contemporaries. Variety is disappearing from the human race; the same ways of acting, thinking, and feeling are to be met with all over the world. This is not only because nations work more upon each other, and are more faithful in their mutual imitation; but as the men of each country relinquish more and more the peculiar opinions and feelings of a caste, a profession, or a family, they simultaneously arrive at something nearer to the constitution of man, which is everywhere the same.”
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