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Alexis de Tocqueville

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01Undated

For benefits by their very greatness spotlight the difference in conditions and arouse a secret annoyance in those who profit from them. But the charm of simple good manners is almost irresistible.

Alexis de Tocqueville / quote

02Undated

Egotism fears its own self.

Alexis de Tocqueville / quote

03Undated

The Americans of the United States do not let their dogs hunt the Indians as do the Spaniards in Mexico, but at bottom it is the same pitiless feeling which here, as everywhere else, animates the European race. This world here belongs to us, they tell themselves every day: the Indian race is destined for final destruction which one cannot prevent and which it is not desirable to delay. Heaven has not made them to become civilized; it is necessary that they die. Besides I do not want to get mixed up in it. I will not do anything against them: I will limit myself to providing everything that will hasten their ruin. In time I will have their lands and will be innocent of their death. Satisfied with his reasoning, the American goes to church where he hears the minister of the gospel repeat every day that all men are brothers, and that the Eternal Being who has made them all in like image, has given them all the duty to help one another.

Alexis de Tocqueville / quote

04Undated

The practice which obtains amongst the Americans of fixing the standard of their judgment in themselves alone, leads them to other habits of mind. As they perceive that they succeed in resolving without assistance all the little difficulties which their practical life presents, they readily conclude that everything in the world may be explained, and that nothing in it transcends the limits of the understanding. Thus they fall to denying what they cannot comprehend; which leaves them but little faith for whatever is extraordinary, and an almost insurmountable distaste for whatever is supernatural.

Alexis de Tocqueville / quote

05Undated

In America religion is the road to knowledge, and the observance of the divine laws leads man to civil freedom.

Alexis de Tocqueville / quote

06Undated

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

Alexis de Tocqueville / quote

07Undated

Under the absolute sway of an individual despot the body was attacked in order to subdue the soul, and the soul escaped the blows which were directed against it and rose superior to the attempt; but such is not the course adopted by tyranny in democratic republics; there the body is left free, and the soul is enslaved.

Alexis de Tocqueville / quote

08Undated

Nations as well as men require time to learn, whatever may be their intelligence or zeal.

Alexis de Tocqueville / quote

09Undated

There is a natural prejudice which prompts men to despise whomsoever has been their inferior long after he has become their equal.

Alexis de Tocqueville / quote

10Undated

The greatest difficulty in antiquity with that of altering the law; among the moderns, it is that of altering the manners.

Alexis de Tocqueville / quote

11Undated

The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democracy, from beneath which the old aristocratic colors sometimes peep.

Alexis de Tocqueville / quote

12Undated

Society is endangered not by the great profligacy of a few, but by the laxity of morals amongst all.

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13Undated

Men will not accept truth at the hands of their enemies, and truth is seldom offered to them by their friends

Alexis de Tocqueville / quote

14Undated

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 / quote

15Undated

In such an admirable position of the New World, man has no other enemy than himself.

Alexis de Tocqueville / quote

16Undated

Society will develop a new kind of servitude which covers the surface of society with a network of complicated rules, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate. It does not tyrannise but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

Alexis de Tocqueville / quote

17Undated

It's not an endlessly expanding list of rights — the 'right' to education, the 'right' to health care, the 'right' to food and housing. That's not freedom, that's dependency. Those aren't rights, those are the rations of slavery — hay and a barn for human cattle.

Alexis de Tocqueville / quote

18Undated

I have always thought it rather interesting to follow the involuntary movements of fear in clever people. Fools coarsely display their cowardice in all its nakedness, but the others are able to cover it with a veil so delicate, so daintily woven with small plausible lies, that there is some pleasure to be found in contemplating this ingenious work of the human intelligence.

Alexis de Tocqueville / quote

19Undated

Durability is one of the chief elements of strength. Nothing is either loved or feared but that which is likely to endure.

Alexis de Tocqueville / quote

20Undated

Slavery received, but the prejudice to which it has given birth remains stationary.

Alexis de Tocqueville / quote

21Undated

It is indeed difficult to imagine how men who have entirely renounced the habit of managing their own affairs could be successful in choosing those who ought to lead them. It is impossible to believe that a liberal, energetic, and wise government can ever emerge from the ballots of a nation of servants.

Alexis de Tocqueville / quote

22Undated

Every nation that has ended in tyranny has come to that end by way of good order. It certainly does not follow from this that peoples should scorn public peace, but neither should they be satisfied with that and nothing more. A nation that asks nothing of government but the maintenance of order is already a slave in the depths of its heart; it is a slave of its well-being, ready for the man who will put it in chains.

Alexis de Tocqueville / quote

23Undated

It is above all in the present democratic age that the true friends of liberty and human grandeur must remain constantly vigilant and ready to prevent the social power from lightly sacrificing the particular rights of a few individuals to the general execution of its designs. In such times there is no citizen so obscure that it is not very dangerous to allow him to be oppressed, and there are no individual rights so unimportant that they can be sacrificed to arbitrariness with impunity.

Alexis de Tocqueville / quote

24Undated

What good does it do me, after all, if an ever-watchful authority keeps an eye out to ensure that my pleasures will be tranquil and races ahead of me to ward off all danger, sparing me the need even to think about such things, if that authority, even as it removes the smallest thorns from my path, is also absolute master of my liberty and my life; if it monopolizes vitality and existence to such a degree that when it languishes, everything around it must also languish; when it sleeps, everything must also sleep; and when it dies, everything must also perish?

Alexis de Tocqueville / quote