Alexis de Tocqueville

Nations as well as men require time to learn, whatever may be their intelligence or zeal.

The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democracy, from beneath which the old aristocratic colors sometimes peep.

The practice which obtains amongst the Americans of fixing the standard of their judgment in themselves alone, leads them to other habits of mind. As they perceive that they succeed in resolving without assistance all the little difficulties which their practical life presents, they readily conclude that everything in the world may be explained, and that nothing in it transcends the limits of the understanding. Thus they fall to denying what they cannot comprehend; which leaves them but little faith for whatever is extraordinary, and an almost insurmountable distaste for whatever is supernatural.

In America religion is the road to knowledge, and the observance of the divine laws leads man to civil freedom.