“In Europe, we are in the habit of looking upon restlessness of spirit, immoderate desire for wealth, and extreme love of independence as great social dangers, but these are precisely the things that guarantee the American republics a long and tranquil future.

Without these restless passions, the population would tend to concentrate in certain places, and before long people would begin to feel, as we do, needs that are hard to satisfy. Happy is the New World, where man’s vices are almost as useful to society as his virtues.”

Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, p. 328. 1835