QUOTES by Alexis de Tocqueville
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“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.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“Consequently, in the United States the law favors those classes which are most interested in evading it elsewhere.”
Quote by -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?”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“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.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“He who has set his heart exclusively upon the pursuit of worldly welfare is always in a hurry, for he has but a limited time at his disposal to reach, to grasp, and to enjoy it.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“nothing, on the other hand, can be more impenetrable to the uninitiated than a legislation founded upon precedents.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“The nations of our time cannot prevent the conditions of men from becoming equal; but it depends upon themselves whether the principle of equality is to lead them to servitude or freedom, to knowledge or barbarism, to prosperity or to wretchedness.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“The only way to neutralize the effect of public journals is to multiply them indefinitely.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“to be a government of "liberty regulated by law," with such results in the development of strength, in population, wealth, and military and commercial power, as no age had ever witnessed.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“The happy and the powerful do not go into exile, and there are no surer guarantees of equality among men than poverty and misfortune.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“am unacquainted with His designs, but I shall not cease to believe in them because I cannot fathom them, and I had rather mistrust my own capacity than His justice.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“The Indians had only the two alternatives of war or civilization; in other words, they must either have destroyed the Europeans or become their equals.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“The passion for war is so intense that there is no undertaking so mad, or so injurious to the welfare of the State, that a man does not consider himself honored in defending it, at the risk of his life.”
Quote by -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.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“Although the vast country which we have been describing was inhabited by many indigenous tribes, it may justly be said at the time of its discovery by Europeans to have formed one great desert. The Indians occupied without possessing it.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“In other words, the government of the democracy is the only one under which the power which lays on taxes escapes the payment of them.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“While he loved liberty, he detested the crimes that had been committed in its name. Jon J. Ingalls”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“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.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“Laws are always unstable unless they are founded upon the manners of the nation; manners are the only durable and resisting power in a people.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“Not only does democracy make every man forget his ancestors, but it hides his descendants, and separates his contemporaries from him; it throws him back forever upon himself alone, and threatens in the end to confine him entirely within the solitude of his own heart.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“The whole people contracts the habits and tastes of the magistrate.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“Jefferson went still further, and he introduced a maxim into the policy of the Union, which affirms that "the Americans ought never to solicit any privileges from foreign nations, in order not to be obliged to grant similar privileges themselves.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“It is easier for the world to accept a simple lie than a complex truth.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“Human understanding more easily invents new things than new words.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“Amongst civilized nations revolts are rarely excited, except by such persons as have nothing to lose by them;”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“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.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“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.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“A depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“In the township, as well as everywhere else, the people is the only source of power; but in no stage of government does the body of citizens exercise a more immediate influence.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“In the States of New England, from the first, the condition of the poor was provided for;”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“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.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“In the United States the majority undertakes to supply a multitude of ready-made opinions for the use of individuals, who are thus relieved from the necessity of forming opinions of their own.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“I know of no country, indeed, where the love of money has taken a stronger hold on the affections of men.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“In the United States, the majority undertakes to supply a multitude of ready-made opinions for the use of individuals, who are thus relieved from the necessity of forming opinions of their own.”
Quote by -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.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“The greatest difficulty in antiquity with that of altering the law; among the moderns, it is that of altering the manners.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“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.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“I have heard of patriotism in the United States, and it is a virtue which may be found among the people, but never among the leaders of the people.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“There is a natural prejudice which prompts men to despise whomsoever has been their inferior long after he has become their equal.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“But a democracy can only obtain truth as the result of experience, and many nations may forfeit their existence whilst they are awaiting the consequences of their errors.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“Nations as well as men require time to learn, whatever may be their intelligence or zeal.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democracy, from beneath which the old aristocratic colors sometimes peep.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“He who has set his heart exclusively upon the pursuit of worldly welfare is always i a hurry, for he has but a limited time at his disposal to reach, to grasp, and to enjoy it.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville