Alexis de Tocqueville Quotes

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I have come across men of letters who have written history without taking part in public affairs, and politicians who have concerned themselves with producing events without thinking about them. I have observed that the first are always inclined to find general causes whereas the second, living in the midst of disconnected daily facts, are prone to imagine that everything is attributable to particular incidents, and that the wires they pull are the same as those that move the world. It is to be presumed that both are equally deceived.

Alexis de Tocqueville
The English or American lawyer investigates what was done, the French lawyer what was most likely intended. One wants decisions; the other, reasons.

Alexis de Tocqueville
The genius of democracies is seen not only in the great number of new words introduced but even more in the new ideas they express.

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

Alexis de Tocqueville
Laws are always unstable unless they are founded on the manners of a nation; and manners are the only durable and resisting power in a people.

Alexis de Tocqueville
No example is so dangerous as that of violence employed by well-meaning people for beneficial objects.

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
The tie of language is perhaps the strongest and the most durable that can unite mankind.

Alexis de Tocqueville
The only substantial difference between the custom of those days and our own resides in the price paid for office. Then they were sold by government, now they are bestowed; it is no longer necessary to pay money; the object can be attained by selling one's soul.

Alexis de Tocqueville
What is understood by republican government in the United States is the slow and quiet action of society upon itself.

Alexis de Tocqueville
As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: how much money will it bring in?

Alexis de Tocqueville
You may set the Negro free, but you cannot make him otherwise than an alien to the European. Nor is this all we scarcely acknowledge the common features of humanity in this stranger whom slavery has brought among us. His physiognomy is to our eyes hideous, his understanding weak, his tastes low; and we are almost inclined to look upon him as a being intermediate between man and the brutes.

Alexis de Tocqueville
Never was any such event [the French Revolution], stemming from factors so far back in the past, so inevitable yet so completely unforeseen.

Alexis de Tocqueville
I am unaware of his plans but I shall never stop believing in them because I cannot fathom them and I prefer to mistrust my own intellectual capacities than his justice.

Alexis de Tocqueville
I do not know if the people of the United States would vote for superior men if they ran for office, but there can be no doubt that such men do not run.

Alexis de Tocqueville
They certainly are not great writers, but they speak their country's language and they make themselves heard.

Alexis de Tocqueville
When I refuse to obey an unjust law, I do not contest the right of the majority to command, but I simply appeal from the sovereignty of the people to the sovereignty of mankind.

Alexis de Tocqueville
Democratic nations…will habitually prefer the useful to the beautiful, and they will require that the beautiful be useful.

Alexis de Tocqueville
Muhammad brought down from heaven and put into the Koran not religious doctrines only, but political maxims, criminal and civil laws, and scientific theories. The Gospels, on the other hand, deal only with the general relations between man and God and between man and man. Beyond that, they teach nothing and do not oblige people to believe anything. That alone, among a thousand reasons, is enough to show that Islam will not be able to hold its power long in ages of enlightenment and democracy, while Christianity is destined to reign in such ages, as in all others.

Alexis de Tocqueville
Nothing tends to materialize man and to deprive his work of the faintest trace of mind more than the extreme division of labor.

Alexis de Tocqueville
They all attributed the peaceful dominion of religion in their country mainly to the separation of church and state. I do not hesitate to affirm that during my stay in America I did not meet a single individual, of the clergy or the laity, who was not of the same opinion on this point.

Alexis de Tocqueville
Every central government worships uniformity: uniformity relieves it from inquiry into an infinity of details.

Alexis de Tocqueville
Americans rightly think their patriotism is a sort of religion strengthened by practical service.

Alexis de Tocqueville
Men in general are neither very good nor very bad, but mediocre... Man with his vices, his weaknesses, his virtues, this confused medley of good and ill, high and low, goodness and depravity, is yet, take him all in all, the object on earth most worthy of study, of interest, of pity, of attachment and of admiration. And since we haven't got angels, we can attach ourselves to nothing greater and more worthy of our devotion than our own kind.

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 America, there are no noblemen or men of letters, and the people distrust the wealthy. Lawyers therefore constitute the superior political class and the most intellectual segment of society.

Alexis de Tocqueville
[Liberty] considers religion as the safeguard of morality, and morality as the best security of law and the surest pledge of the duration of freedom.

Alexis de Tocqueville
American aristocracy is found at the bar and on the bench.

Alexis de Tocqueville
I have never been more struck by the good sense and the practical judgment of the Americans than in the manner in which they elude the numberless difficulties resulting from their Federal Constitution.

Alexis de Tocqueville
In no country in the world is the love of property more active and more anxious than in the United States.

Alexis de Tocqueville