Alexis de Tocqueville Quotes

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It is easy to see that, even in the freedom of early youth, an American girl never quite loses control of herself; she enjoys all permitted pl...

By Alexis de Tocqueville
Trade is the natural enemy of all violent passions. Trade loves moderation, delights in compromise, and is most careful to avoid anger. It is patient, supple, and insinuating, only resorting to extreme measures in cases of absolute necessity. Trade makes men independent of one another and gives them a high idea of their personal importance: it leads them to want to manage their own affairs and teaches them to succeed therein. Hence it makes them inclined to liberty but disinclined to revolution.

By Alexis de Tocqueville
Not only does democracy make every man forget his ancestors, but also clouds their view of their descendants and isolates them from their contemporaries. Each man is for ever thrown back on himself alone, and there is danger that he may be shut up in the solitude of his own heart.

By Alexis de Tocqueville
In America the majority raises formidable barriers around the liberty of opinion; within these barriers an author may write what he pleases, but woe to him if he goes beyond them.

By Alexis de Tocqueville
It is almost never when a state of things is the most detestable that it is smashed, but when, beginning to improve, it permits men to breathe, to reflect, to communicate their thoughts with each other, and to gauge by what they already have the extent of their rights and their grievances. The weight, although less heavy, seems then all the more unbearable.

By Alexis de Tocqueville
In a revolution, as in a novel. the most difficult part to invent is the end.

By Alexis de Tocqueville
The most dangerous moment for a bad government is when it begins to reform.

By Alexis de Tocqueville
I am obliged to confess that I do not regard the abolition of slavery as a means of warding off the struggle of the two races in the Southern states. The Negroes may long remain slaves without complaining; but if they are once raised to the level of freemen, they will soon revolt at being deprived of almost all their civil rights; and as they cannot become the equals of the whites, they will speedily show themselves as enemies.

By Alexis de Tocqueville
The first who attracts the eye, the first in enlightenment, in power and in happiness, is the white man, the European, man par excellence; below him appear the Negro and the Indian. These two unfortunate races have neither birth, nor face, nor language, nor mores in common; only their misfortunes look alike. Both occupy an equally inferior position in the country that they inhabit; both experience the effects of tyranny; and if their miseries are different, they can accuse the same author for them.

By Alexis de Tocqueville
In politics... shared hatreds are almost always the basis of friendships.

By Alexis de Tocqueville
Born often under another sky, placed in the middle of an always moving scene, himself driven by the irresistible torrent which draws all about him, the American has no time to tie himself to anything, he grows accustomed only to change, and ends by regarding it as the natural state of man. He feels the need of it, more he loves it; for the instability; instead of meaning disaster to him, seems to give birth only to miracles all about him.

By Alexis de Tocqueville
Though it is very important for man as an individual that his religion should be true, that is not the case for society. Society has nothing to fear or hope from another life; what is most important for it is not that all citizens profess the true religion but that they should profess religion.

By Alexis de Tocqueville
Those that despise people will never get the best out of others and themselves.

By Alexis de Tocqueville
The territorial aristocracy of former ages was either bound by law, or thought itself bound by usage, to come to the relief of its serving-men and to relieve their distress. But the manufacturing aristocracy of our age first impoverishes and debases the men who serve it and then abandons them to be supported by the charity of the public. This is a natural consequence of what has been said before. Between the workman and the master there are frequent relations, but no real association. I am of the opinion, on the whole, that the manufacturing aristocracy which is growing up under our eyes is one of the harshest that ever existed in the world; but at the same time it is one of the most confined and least dangerous. Nevertheless, the friends of democracy should keep their eyes anxiously fixed in this direction; for if ever a permanent inequality of conditions and aristocracy again penetrates into the world, it may be predicted that this is the gate by which they will enter.

By Alexis de Tocqueville
It is the dissimilarities and inequalities among men which give rise to the notion of honor; as such differences become less, it grows feeble; and when they disappear, it will vanish too.

By Alexis de Tocqueville
Grant me thirty years of equal division of inheritances and a free press, and I will provide you with a republic.

By Alexis de Tocqueville
However energetically society in general may strive to make all the citizens equal and alike, the personal pride of each individual will always make him try to escape from the common level, and he will form some inequality somewhere to his own profit.

By Alexis de Tocqueville
The principle of equality does not destroy the imagination, but lowers its flight to the level of the earth.

By Alexis de Tocqueville
An American cannot converse, but he can discuss, and his talk falls into a dissertation. He speaks to you as if he was addressing a meeting; and if he should chance to become warm in the discussion, he will say Gentlemen to the person with whom he is conversing.

By Alexis de Tocqueville
In countries where associations are free, secret societies are unknown. In America there are factions, but no conspiracies.

By Alexis de Tocqueville
I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America.

By Alexis de Tocqueville
It is easy to see that, even in the freedom of early youth, an American girl never quite loses control of herself; she enjoys all permitted pleasures without losing her head about any of them, and her reason never lets the reins go, though it may often seem to let them flap.

By Alexis de Tocqueville
The whole life of an American is passed like a game of chance, a revolutionary crisis, or a battle.

By Alexis de Tocqueville
Two things in America are astonishing: the changeableness of most human behavior and the strange stability of certain principles. Men are constantly on the move, but the spirit of humanity seems almost unmoved.

By Alexis de Tocqueville
When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness

By Alexis de Tocqueville
When American(s) ask for the cooperation of (their) fellow citizens, it is seldom refused; and I have often seen it afforded spontaneously and with great good will

By Alexis de Tocqueville
What is the most important for democracy is not that great fortunes should not exist, but that great fortunes should not remain in the same hands. In that way there are rich men, but they do not form a class

By Alexis de Tocqueville
We succeed in enterprises which demand the positive qualities we possess, but we excel in those which can also make use of our defects

By Alexis de Tocqueville
There is hardly a political question in the United States which does not sooner or later turn into a judicial one

By Alexis de Tocqueville
There are two things which a democratic people will always find very difficult - to begin a war and to end it

By Alexis de Tocqueville