QUOTES by Alexis de Tocqueville
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“A central administration enervates the nations in which it exists by incessantly diminishing their public spirit. If such an administration succeeds in convincing all the disposable resources of a people, it impairs at least the renewal of those resources.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“Nothing is more repugnant to the human mind in an age of equality than the idea of subjection to forms.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“The Revolution in the United States was produced by a mature and thoughtful taste for liberty, and not by a vague and undefined instinct for independence.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“Slavery received, but the prejudice to which it has given birth remains stationary.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“No form or combination of social polity has yet been devised to make an energetic people out of a community of pusillanimous and enfeebled citizens.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“I am unacquainted with a more deplorable spectacle than that of a people unable either to defend or to maintain its independence.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“Now I know of only two methods of establishing equality in the political world; every citizen must be put in possession of his rights, or rights must be granted to no one.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“The will of the nation" is one of those expressions which have been most profusely abused by the wily and the despotic of every age.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“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.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“One's love for despotism is in exact proportion to one's contempt for one's country.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“One of the commonest weaknesses of human intelligence is the wish to reconcile opposing principles and to purchase harmony at the expense of logic.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“It would seem that if despotism were to be established among the democratic nations of our days, it might assume a different character; it would be more extensive and more mild; it would degrade men without tormenting them.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“It is impossible to read this opening paragraph without an involuntary feeling of religious awe; it breathed the very savor of Gospel antiquity. The sincerity of the author heightens his power of language.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“Evils which are patiently endured when they seem inevitable become intolerable once the idea of escape from them is suggested.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“The language in which thought is embodied is the mere carcass of the thought, and not the idea itself; tribunals may condemn the form, but the sense and spirit of the work is too subtle for their authority.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“The prestige of royal power has evaporated, but the majesty of the law has failed to take its place. People nowadays despise authority yet still fear it, and fear extracts from them more than they previously gave out of respect and love.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“But in the course of thirty years a great change took place, and the North refused to perpetuate what had become the "peculiar institution" of the South, especially as it gave the South a species of aristocratic preponderance.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry interests, in one word, so anti-poetic, as the life of a man in the United States.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“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.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“The most natural privilege of man, next to the right of acting for himself, is that of combining his exertions with those of his fellow-creatures, and of acting in common with them.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“In the midst of the apparent diversity of human affairs, a certain number of primary facts may be discovered, from which all others are derived.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“Town-meetings are to liberty what primary schools are to science;”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“What one must fear, moreover, is not so much the sight of the immorality of the great as that of immorality leading to greatness.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“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.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“But in America the sovereignty of the people is neither hidden nor sterile as with some other nations; mores recognize it, and the laws proclaim it; it spreads with freedom and attains unimpeded its ultimate consequences.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“He who in given cases consents to obey his fellows with servility, and who submits his will, and even his thoughts, to their control, how can he pretend that he wishes to be free?”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“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.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“The province of Texas is still part of the Mexican dominions, but it will soon contain no Mexicans; the same thing has occurred whenever the Anglo-Americans have come into contact with populations of a different origin.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“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.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“Next to hating their enemies, men are most inclined to flatter them.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“The democratic nations that have introduced freedom into their political constitution at the very time when they were augmenting the despotism of their administrative constitution have been led into strange paradoxes. To manage those minor affairs in which good sense is all that is wanted, the people are held to be unequal to the task; but when the government of the country is at stake, the people are invested with immense powers; they are alternately made the play things of their ruler, and his masters, more than kings and less than men. After having exhausted all the different modes of election without finding one to suit their purpose, they are still amazed and still bent on seeking further; as if the evil they notice did not originate in the constitution of the country far more than in that of the electoral body.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“Another tendency, which is extremely natural to democratic nations and extremely dangerous, is that which leads them to despise and undervalue the rights of private persons. The attachment which men feel to a right, and the respect which they display for it, is generally proportioned to its importance, or to the length of time during which they have enjoyed it. The rights of private persons amongst democratic nations are commonly of small importance, of recent growth, and extremely precarious; the consequence is that they are often sacrificed without regret, and almost always violated without remorse.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“In such an admirable position of the New World, man has no other enemy than himself.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“Nothing is more necessary to the culture of the higher sciences, or of the more elevated departments of science, than meditation; and nothing is less suited to meditation than the structure of democratic society.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“Rulers who destroy men's freedom commonly begin by trying to retain its forms. ... They cherish the illusion that they can combine the prerogatives of absolute power with the moral authority that comes from popular assent.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“In America religion is the road to knowledge, and the observance of the divine laws leads man to civil freedom.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“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.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“In democratic society each citizen is habitually busy with the contemplation of a very petty object, which is himself.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“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.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“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.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“When justice is more certain and more mild, is at the same time more efficacious.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“Our contemporaries are constantly excited by two conflicting passions: they want to be led, and they wish to remain free. As they cannot destroy either the one or the other of these contrary propensities, they strive to satisfy them both at once. They devise a sole, tutelary, and all-powerful form of government, but elected by the people. They combine the principle of centralization and that of popular sovereignty; this gives them a respite: they console themselves for being in tutelage by the reflection that they have chosen their own guardians. Every man allows himself to be put in leading-strings, because he sees that it is not a person or a class of persons, but the people at large who hold the end of his chain.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“The short space of threescore years can never content the imagination of man; nor can the imperfect joys of this world satisfy his heart. Man alone, of all created beings, displays a natural contempt of existence, and yet a boundless desire to exist; he scorns life, but he dreads annihilation. These different feelings incessantly urged his soul to the contemplation of a future state, and religion directs his musings thither. Religion, then, is simply another form of hope; and it is no less natural to the human heart than hope itself.”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville
“There is a natural prejudice which prompts men to despise whomsoever has been their inferior long after he is become their equal;”
Quote by -Alexis de Tocqueville