Top 100 Alexis De Tocqueville Quotes
#1. A certain degree of power must be granted to public officers, for they would be of no use without it. But the ostensible semblance of authority is by no means indispensable to the conduct of affairs, and it is needlessly offensive to the susceptibility of the public.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#2. The revolution of the United States was the result of a mature and dignified taste for freedom, and not of a vague or ill-defined craving for independence.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#3. It is from the midst of this putrid sewer that the greatest river of human industry springs up and carries fertility to the whole world. From this foul drain pure gold flows forth.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#4. In the principle of equality I very clearly discern two tendencies; one leading the mind of every man to untried thoughts, the other prohibiting him from thinking at all.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#5. What is called family pride is often founded on the illusion of self-love. A man wishes to perpetuate and immortalize himself.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#6. [Patriotism] is in itself a kind of religion: it does not reason, but it acts from the impulse of faith and sentiment.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#7. No state of society or laws can render men so much alike but that education, fortune, and tastes will interpose some differences between them; and though different men may sometimes find it their interest to combine for the same purposes, they will never make it their pleasure.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#9. The advantage of democracy is not, as has been sometimes asserted, that it protects the interests of the whole community, but simply that it protects those of the majority.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#12. 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
#15. [N]ow that I am drawing to the close of this work, in which I have spoken of so many important things done by the Americans, to what the singular prosperity and growing strength of that people ought mainly to be attributed, I should reply: To the superiority of their women.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#16. I am of opinion that a central administration enervates the nations in which it exists by incessantly diminishing their public spirit.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#17. 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
#18. Freedom sees in religion the companion of its struggles and its triumphs, the cradle of its infancy, the divine source of its rights. It considers religion as the safeguard of mores; and mores as the guarantee of laws and the pledge of its duration.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#19. As the past has ceased to throw its light upon the future, the mind of man wanders in obscurity.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#20. The French constitute the most brilliant and the most dangerous nation in Europe and the best qualified in turn to become an object of admiration, hatred, pity or terror but never indifference.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#21. In reality it is far less prejudicial to witness the immorality of the great than to witness that immorality which leads to greatness.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#22. Nothing is more repugnant to the human mind in an age of equality than the idea of subjection to forms.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#23. Righteous women in their circle of influence,
beginning in the home, can turn the world around.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#24. The evil which one suffers patiently as inevitable seems insupportable as soon as he conceives the idea of escaping from it.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#26. The great privilege of the Americans does not simply consist in their being more enlightened than other nations, but in their being able to repair the faults they may commit.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#27. Whatever may be the general endeavor of a community to render its members equal and alike, the personal pride of individuals will always seek to rise above the line, and to form somewhere an inequality to their own advantage.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#28. Society was cut in two: those who had nothing united in common envy; those who had anything united in common terror.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#29. In democratic times, enjoyment is keener than in aristocratic centuries, and above all the number of those who taste it is infinitely greater; but on the other hand, one must recognize that hopes and desires are more often disappointed, souls more arouse and more restive, and cares more burning.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#30. 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
#31. I know of no country, indeed, where the love of money has taken a stronger hold on the affections of men.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#32. No African has ever voluntarily emigrated to the shores of the New World; whence it must be inferred, that all the blacks who are now to be found in that hemisphere are either slaves or freedmen.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#33. In democratic centuries, on the contrary, when the duties of each individual toward the species are much clearer, devotion toward one man becomes rarer: the bond of human affections is extended and loosened.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#34. It had been supposed, until our time, that despotism was odious, under whatever form it appeared. But it is a discovery of modern days that there are such things as legitimate tyranny and holy injustice, provided they are exercised in the name of the people.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#35. 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
#36. 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
#37. I am of opinion, that, in the democratic ages which are opening upon us, individual independence and local liberties will ever be the produce of artificial contrivance; that centralization will be the natural form of government.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#38. There are many men of principle in both parties in America, but there is no party of principle.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#39. The most perilous moment for a bad government is one when it seeks to mend its ways.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#40. Germans Francis Grund, and Francis Lieber, and the Pole Adam G. de Gurowski all wrote about the striking social equality they found in America, the absence of differences in status. They all noted the American obsession with work and the restless quest for the "almighty dollar."18
Alexis De Tocqueville
#41. The progress of democracy seems irresistible, because it is the most uniform, the most ancient and the most permanent tendency which is to be found in history.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#42. Lawyers belong to the people by birth and interest, and to the aristocracy by habit and taste; they may be looked upon as the connecting link of the two great classes of society.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#43. The prejudice of the race appears stronger in the States that have abolished slaves than in the States where slavery still exists. White carpenters, white bricklayers, and white painters will not work side by side with the blacks in the North but do it in almost every Southern State ...
Alexis De Tocqueville
#44. But 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
#45. In the United States, if a political character attacks a sect, this may not prevent even the partisans of that very sect, from supporting him; but if he attacks all the sects together, every one abandons him and he remains alone.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#46. How could a society escape destruction if, when political ties are relaxed, moral ties are not tightened, and what can be done with a people master of itself if it not subject to God?
Alexis De Tocqueville
#47. No true power can be founded among men which does not depend upon the free union of their inclinations; and patriotism and religion are the only two motives in the world which can permanently direct the whole of the body politic to one end.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#48. The free worker receives a wage; the slave an education, food, care, clothing; the money that the master spends to keep the slave is drained little by little and in detail; one hardly perceives it.1
Alexis De Tocqueville
#50. The whole life of an American is passed like a game of chance, a revolutionary crisis, or a battle.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#51. In democratic society each citizen is habitually busy with the contemplation of a very petty object, which is himself.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#52. The whole military power of the State is at the disposal of the Governor. He is the commander of the militia, and head of the armed force.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#53. General ideas are no proof of the strength, but rather of the insufficiency of the human intellect.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#54. The two chief weapons which parties use in order to ensure success are the public press and the formation of associations.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#56. This so-called tolerance, which, in my opinion, is nothing but a huge indifference.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#57. There is no more invariable rule in the history of society: the further electoral rights are extended, the greater is the need of extending them; for after each concession the strength of the democracy increases, and its demands increase with its strength.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#58. You may be sure that if you succeed in bringing your audience into the presence of something that affects them, they will not care by what road you brought them there; and they will never reproach you for having excited their emotions in spite of dramatic rules.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#59. I am far from denying that newspapers in democratic countries lead citizens to do very ill-considered things in common; but without newspapers there would be hardly any common action at all. So they mend many more ills than they cause.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#60. From this foul drain the greatest stream of human industry flows out to fertilize the whole world. From this filthy sewer gold flows. Here humanity attains its most complete development and its most brutish, here civilization works its miracles and civilized man is turned almost into a savage.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#61. Nothing, on the other hand, can be more impenetrable to the uninitiated than a legislation founded upon precedents.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#62. The only nations which deny the utility of provincial liberties are those which have fewest of them; in other words, those who are unacquainted with the institution are the only persons who passed censure upon it.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#63. When a large number of organs of the press come to advance along the same track, their influence becomes almost irresistible in the long term, and public opinion, struck always from the same side, ends by yielding under their blows.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#64. It was never assumed in the United States that the citizen of a free country has a right to do whatever he pleases; on the contrary, social obligations were there imposed upon him more various than anywhere else.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#65. In countries where associations are free, secret societies are unknown. In America there are factions, but no conspiracies.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#67. I know of no other country where love of money has such a grip on men's hearts or where stronger scorn is expressed for the theory of permanent equality of property
Alexis De Tocqueville
#68. One's love for despotism is in exact proportion to one's contempt for one's country.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#69. 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
#70. One of the commonest weaknesses of human intelligence is the wish to reconcile opposing principles and to purchase harmony at the expensive of logic.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#71. Each man is forever thrown back on himself alone, and there is danger that he may be shut up in the solitude of his own heart.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#72. Consider any individual at any period of his life, and you will always find him preoccupied with fresh plans to increase his comfort.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#73. It is far more important to resist apathy than anarchy or despotism, for apathy can give rise, almost indifferently, to either one.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#74. The more government takes the place of associations, the more will individuals lose the idea of forming associations and need the government to come to their help. That is a vicious circle of cause and effect.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#75. In such an admirable position of the New World, man has no other enemy than himself.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#76. This demonstrated to me that those who regard universal suffrage as a guarantee for good choices are under a complete illusion. Universal suffrage has other advantages, but not that one.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#77. In democratic countries, knowledge of how to combine is the mother of all other forms of knowledge; on its progress depends that of all the others.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#78. [R]eligion cannot share the material strength of the rulers without being burdened with some of the animosity roused against them.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#79. I cannot believe that a republic could subsist if the influence of the lawyers in public business did not increase in proportion to the power of the people.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#80. Those which we call necessary institutions are simply no more than institutions to which we have become accustomed.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#81. Christianity is the companion of liberty in all its conflicts, the cradle of its infancy, and the divine source of its claims.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#82. The taste for well-being is the prominent and indelible feature of democratic times.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#83. In America one of the first things done in a new State is to make the post go there; in the forests of Michigan there is no cabin so isolated, no valley so wild, but that letters and newspapers arrive at least once a week.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#84. 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
#85. A man who raises himself by degrees to wealth and power, contracts, in the course of this protracted labor, habits of prudence and restraint which he cannot afterwards shake off. A man cannot gradually enlarge his mind as he does his house.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#86. All revolutions more or less threaten the tenure of property: but most of those who live in democratic countries are possessed of property - not only are they possessed of property but they live in the condition of men who set the greatest store upon their property.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#87. I studied the Koran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Muhammad
Alexis De Tocqueville
#89. Better use has been made of association and this powerful instrument of action has been applied for more varied aims in America than anywhere else in the world.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#90. Thus the negro transmits the eternal mark of his ignominy to all his descendants; and although the law may abolish slavery, God alone can obliterate the traces of its existence.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#92. Among these widely differing families of men, the first that attracts attention, the superior in intelligence, in power, and in enjoyment, is the white, or European, the MAN pre-eminently so called, below him appear the Negro and the Indian.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#93. One has freedom as the principal means of action; the other has servitude. Their ... paths [are] diverse; nevertheless, each seems called by some secret design of Providence one day to hold in its hands the destinies of half the world.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#94. A long war almost always places nations in this sad alternative: that their defeat delivers them to destruction and their triumph to despotism.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#95. [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
#96. Every central government worships uniformity: uniformity relieves it from inquiry into an infinity of details.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#97. Despotism alone can provide that atmosphere of secrecy which favors crooked dealing and enables the freebooters of finance to make illicit fortunes.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#98. However enlightened and however skilful a central power may be, it cannot of itself embrace all the details of the existence of a great nation.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#99. Comfort becomes a goal when distinctions of rank are abolished and privileges destroyed.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#100. The European generally submits to a public officer because he represents a superior force; but to an American he represents a right. In America it may be said that no one renders obedience to man, but to justice and to law.
Alexis De Tocqueville
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
