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It is their mores, then, that make the Americans of the United States…capable of maintaining the rule of democracy…. Too much importance is attached to laws and too little to mores…. I am convinced that the luckiest of geographical circumstances and the best of laws cannot maintain a constitution in spite of mores, whereas the latter can turn even the most unfavorable circumstances…to advantage…. If I have not succeeded in making the reader feel the importance I attach to the practical experience of the Americans, to their habits, laws, and, in a word, their mores, I have failed in the main object of my work. -Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in American
