Alexis De Tocqueville Quotes

The power of the periodical press is second only to that of the people.

The more alike men are, the weaker each feels in the face of all.

He [Napoleon] was as great as a man can be without morality.

The taste which men have for liberty and that which they feel for equality are, in fact, two different things...among democratic nations they are two unequal things.

You need not value it yourself if you do not wish to; but you ought to allow it to us who do value it.

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.

When the people rule, they must be rendered happy, or they will overturn the state.

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?

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

Of all the countries of the world America is the one where the movement of thought and human industry is the most continuous and swift.

Furthermore, when citizens are all almost equal, it becomes difficult for them to defend their independence against the aggressions of power.

I have always noticed in politics how often men are ruined by having too good a memory.

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.

Town meetings are to liberty what primary schools are to science; they bring it within the people's reach.

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

It must not be forgotten that it is especially dangerous to enslave men in the minor details of life.

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.

History, it is easily perceived, is a picture-gallery containing a host of copies and very few originals.

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

Military discipline is merely a perfection of social servitude.

It is far more important to resist apathy than anarchy or despotism, for apathy can give rise, almost indifferently, to either one.

He who seeks freedom for anything but freedom's self is made to be a slave.

Physical strength therefore is one of the first conditions of happiness and even of the existence of nations.

At the head of any new undertaking where in France you would find the government, or in England some great lord, in the United States you are sure to find an association.

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.

America is a land of wonders, in which everything is in constant motion and every change seems an improvement.

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.

Can it be believed that the democracy, which has overthrown the feudal system and vanquished kings, will retreat before tradesmen and capitalists?

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.

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

I do not find fault with equality for drawing men into the pursuit of forbidden pleasures, but for absorbing them entirely in the search for the pleasures that are permitted.

No men are less addicted to reverie than the citizens of a democracy.

The aspect of American society is animated, because men and things are always changing; but it is monotonous, because all the changes are alike.

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

There is no philosopher in the world so great but he believes a million things on the faith of other people and accepts a great many more truths than he demonstrates.

We need a new political science for a new world.

I see no clear reason why the doctrine of self-interest properly understood should turn men away from religious beliefs.

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

Democracy does not create strong ties between people. But it does make living together easier.

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

What is not yet done is only what we have not yet attempted to do.

The world belongs to those with the most energy.

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.

Democratic nations care but little for what has been, but they are haunted by visions of what will be.

Despotism may be able to do without religion, but democracy cannot.

The people reign over the American political world as God rules over the universe. It is the cause and the end of all things; everything rises out of it and is absorbed back into it.

The last thing abandoned by a party is its phraseology.

A great democratic revolution is taking place in our midst.

All around you everything is on the move.

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.