![]() ![]() McDowell got the quote is not known, although this much is certain: he didn’t get it from Alexis de Tocqueville. ![]() John McDowell, included the quote in a Sunday sermon and attributed it to Tocqueville. According to the letter, an official with the Presbyterian Board of Home Missions, the Rev. ![]() Wikiquotes has identified an earlier source, a 1922 letter to a Presbyterian magazine called the Herald and Presbyter (vol. Bartleby’s dictionary of quotations traces the quote to a 1941 book titled The Kingdom of God and the American Dream, by Sherwood Eddy, a theologically liberal Christian socialist and missionary, who claimed to be quoting Tocqueville. Tocqueville never wrote anything remotely resembling that in Democracy in America. “America is great because America is good” is a case in point. This combination of traits explains why so many politicians (or their speechwriters) feel compelled to quote it without actually reading it. Title Page of the first American edition of Tocqueville’s classic, published in 1838.ĭemocracy in America is widely appraised as “the most perceptive and influential book ever written about American politics and society,” but it is also extremely long (typically 800-900 pages, depending on the edition) as well as extremely complex. ![]()
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