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, Democracy in America (1835). copy citation

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Author Alexis de Tocqueville
Source Democracy in America
Topic poverty immigration misfortune exile
Date 1835
Language English
Reference
Note Translated by Henry Reeve
Weblink http://www.gutenberg.org/files/815/815-h/815-h.htm

Context

“All these European colonies contained the elements, if not the development, of a complete democracy. Two causes led to this result. It may safely be advanced, that on leaving the mother-country the emigrants had in general no notion of superiority over one another. The happy and the powerful do not go into exile, and there are no surer guarantees of equality among men than poverty and misfortune. It happened, however, on several occasions, that persons of rank were driven to America by political and religious quarrels. Laws were made to establish a gradation of ranks; but it was soon found that the soil of America was opposed to a territorial aristocracy.” source
Original quote

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