OT:
Just ran onto this, never saw it in Democracy in America. Is it
his, or should it be credited to the usual suspects?

“It covers the surface of society with a network of small
complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most
original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate,
to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but
softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but
they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not
destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it
compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till
each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and
industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”

– Alexis de Tocqueville on soft despotism