Alexis de Tocqueville Quotes

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When the taste for physical gratifications among them has grown more rapidly than their education... the time will come when men are carried away and lose all self-restraint.... It is not necessary to do violence to such a people in order to strip them of the rights they enjoy; they themselves willingly loosen their hold.... they neglect their chief business which is to remain their own masters.

Alexis de Tocqueville
What most astonishes me in the United States, is not so much the marvelous grandeur of some undertakings, as the innumerable multitude of small ones.

Alexis de Tocqueville
In the Western settlements we may behold democracy arrived at its utmost limits.

Alexis de Tocqueville
There is hardly a congressman prepared to go home until he has at least one speech printed and sent to his constituents, and he won't let anybody interrupt his harangue until he has made all his useful suggestions about the 24 states of the Union, and especially the district he represents.

Alexis de Tocqueville
The Americans combine the notions of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other; and with them this conviction does not spring from that barren traditionary faith which seems to vegetate in the soul rather than to live.

Alexis de Tocqueville
There is in fact a manly and legitimate passion for equality that spurs all men to wish to be strong and esteemed. This passion tends to elevate the lesser to the rank of the greater. But one also finds in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to want to bring the strong down to their level, and which reduces men to preferring equality in servitude to inequality in freedom.

Alexis de Tocqueville
In democracies, nothing is more great or more brilliant than commerce: it attracts the attention of the public, and fills the imagination of the multitude; all energetic passions are directed towards it.

Alexis de Tocqueville
A democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it.

Alexis de Tocqueville
The whole country seems to have melded into one middle class.

Alexis de Tocqueville
Among the droves of men with political ambitions in the United States, I found very few with that virile candor, that manly independence of thought, that often distinguished Americans in earlier times and that is invariably the preeminent trait of great characters wherever it exists.

Alexis de Tocqueville
If men are to remain civilized or to become so, the art of associating together must grow and improve in the same ratio in which the equality of conditions is increased.

Alexis de Tocqueville
As for me, I am deeply a democrat; this is why I am in no way a socialist. Democracy and socialism cannot go together. You can't have it both ways.

Alexis de Tocqueville
There are at the present time two great nations in the world—allude to the Russians and the Americans— All other nations seem to have nearly reached their national limits, and have only to maintain their power; these alone are proceeding—along a path to which no limit can be perceived.

Alexis de Tocqueville
In no other country in the world is the love of property keener or more alert than in the United States, and nowhere else does the majority display less inclination toward doctrines which in any way threaten the way property is owned.

Alexis de Tocqueville
To remain silent is the most useful service that a mediocre speaker can render to the public good.

Alexis de Tocqueville
With much care and skill power has been broken into fragments in the American township, so that the maximum possible number of people have some concern with public affairs.

Alexis de Tocqueville
Rulers who destroy men's freedom commonly begin by trying to retain its forms.... They cherish the illusion that they can combine the prerogatives of absolute power with the moral authority that comes from popular assent.

Alexis de Tocqueville
I considered mores to be one of the great general causes responsible for the maintenance of a democratic republic... the term "mores"... meaning... habits of the heart.

Alexis de Tocqueville
Military discipline is merely a perfection of social servitude.

Alexis de Tocqueville
In cities men cannot be prevented from concerting together, and from awakening a mutual excitement which prompts sudden and passionate resolutions. Cities may be looked upon as large assemblies, of which all the inhabitants are members; their populace exercises a prodigious influence upon the magistrates, and frequently executes its own wishes without their intervention.

Alexis de Tocqueville
European Christianity has allowed itself to be intimately united with the powers of this world. Now that these powers are falling, it is as if it were buried under their ruins.

Alexis de Tocqueville
I have only one passion, the love of liberty and human dignity.

Alexis de Tocqueville
Any measure that establishes legal charity on a permanent basis and gives it an administrative form thereby creates an idle and lazy class, living at the expense of the industrial and working class.

Alexis de Tocqueville
By and large the literature of a democracy will never exhibit the order, regularity, skill, and art characteristic of aristocratic literature; formal qualities will be neglected or actually despised. The style will often be strange, incorrect, overburdened, and loose, and almost always strong and bold. Writers will be more anxious to work quickly than to perfect details. Short works will be commoner than long books, wit than erudition, imagination than depth. There will be a rude and untutored vigor of thought with great variety and singular fecundity. Authors will strive to astonish more than to please, and to stir passions rather than to charm taste.

Alexis de Tocqueville
They (the emperors) frequently abused their power arbitrarily to deprive their subjects of property or of life: their tyranny was extremely onerous to the few, but it did not reach the greater number;.. But it would seem that if despotism were to be established amongst the democratic nations of our days it might assume a different character; it would be more extensive and more mild, it would degrade men without tormenting them.

Alexis de Tocqueville