“.every citizen … is taught . the doctrines and the evidences of his religion, the history of his country, and the leading features of its Constitution … it is extremely rare to find a man imperfectly acquainted with all these things, and a person wholly ignorant of them is a sort of phenomenon.”
“…no sort of comparison can be drawn between the pioneer and the dwelling that shelters him…. He wears the dress and speaks the language of the cities; he is acquainted with the past, curious about the future, and ready for argument about the present…. I do not think that so much intellectual activity exists in the most enlightened and populous districts of France”
Alexis de Tocqueville
Courtesy of the National Center for Constitutional Studies (www.nccs.net)