Alexis de Tocqueville Quotes

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I cannot help fearing that men may reach a point where they look on every new theory as a danger, every innovation as a toilsome trouble, every social advance as a first step toward revolution, and that they may absolutely refuse to move at all.

Alexis de Tocqueville
It is an axiom of political science in the United States that the sole means of neutralizing the effects of newspapers is to multiply their number.

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

Alexis de Tocqueville
Men are not corrupted by the exercise of power or debased by the habit of obedience, but by the exercise of a power which they believe to be illegal and by obedience to a rule which they consider to be usurped and oppressive.

Alexis de Tocqueville
Christianity has therefore retained a strong hold on the public mind in America... In the United States... Christianity itself is a fact so irresistibly established, that no one undertakes either to attack or to defend it.

Alexis de Tocqueville
It profits me but little, after all, that a vigilant authority always protects the tranquility of my pleasures and constantly averts all dangers from my path, without my care or concern, if this same authority is the absolute master of my liberty and my life....

Alexis de Tocqueville
There is no country in the world in which everything can be provided for by the laws, or in which political institutions can prove a substitute for common sense and public morality.

Alexis de Tocqueville
I must say that I have seen Americans make great and real sacrifices to the public welfare; and have noticed a hundred instances in which they hardly ever failed to lend faithful support to one another.

Alexis de Tocqueville
The French under the old monarchy held it for a maxim that the king could do no wrong. The Americans entertain the same opinion with respect to the majority.... If ever the free institutions of America are destroyed, that event may be attributed to the omnipotence of the majority.

Alexis de Tocqueville
The taste for well-being is the prominent and indelible feature of democratic times.

Alexis de Tocqueville
This so-called tolerance, which, in my opinion, is nothing but a huge indifference.

Alexis de Tocqueville
One of the most ordinary weaknesses of the human intellect is to seek to reconcile contrary principles, and to purchase peace at the expense of logic.

Alexis de Tocqueville
To commit violent and unjust acts, it is not enough for a government to have the will or even the power; the habits, ideas and passions of the time must lend themselves to their committal.

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
It is certain that despotism ruins individuals by preventing them from producing wealth much more than by depriving them of what they have already produced; it dries up the source of riches, while it usually respects acquired property. Freedom, on the contrary, produces far more goods than it destroys; and the nations which are favored by free institutions invariably find that their resources increase even more rapidly than their taxes.

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
Nature secretly avenges herself for the constraint imposed upon her by the laws of man.

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
Men seldom take the opinion of their equal, or of a man like themselves, upon trust.

Alexis de Tocqueville
In America man never obeys man, but justice or the law.

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 state of equality is perhaps less elevated, but it is more just; and its justice constitutes its greatness and beauty.

Alexis de Tocqueville
Men living in democratic times have many passions, but most of their passions either end in the love of riches, or proceed from it.

Alexis de Tocqueville
Those who prize freedom only for the material benefits it offers have never kept it for long.

Alexis de Tocqueville
Men will not receive the truth from their enemies, and it is seldom offered to them by their friends....

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

Alexis de Tocqueville
Nations are less disposed to make revolutions in proportion as personal property is augmented and distributed among them, and as the number of those possessing it is increased.

Alexis de Tocqueville
By obliging men to turn their attention to other affairs than their own, it rubs off that private selfishness which is the rust of society.

Alexis de Tocqueville
Democratic institutions generally give men a lofty notion of their country and themselves.

Alexis de Tocqueville
When an American asks for the cooperation of his fellow citizens, it is seldom refused; and I have often seen it afforded spontaneously and with great good will.

Alexis de Tocqueville