Alexis De Tocqueville (1805-1859)

Quotes

• I should have loved freedom, I believe, at all times, but in the time in which we live I am ready to worship it.

• In America the majority raises formidable barriers around the liberty of opinion; within these barriers an author may write what he pleases, but woe to him if he goes beyond them.

• Nothing is quite so wretchedly corrupt as an aristocracy which has lost its power but kept its wealth and which still has endless leisure to devote to nothing but banal enjoyments. All its great thoughts and passionate energy are things of the past, and nothing but a host of petty, gnawing vices now cling to it like worms to a corpse.

• However energetically society in general may strive to make all the citizens equal and alike, the personal pride of each individual will always make him try to escape from the common level, and he will form some inequality somewhere to his own profit.

• Americans are so enamored of equality, they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.

• Consider any individual at any period of his life, and you will always find him preoccupied with fresh plans to increase his comfort.

• It is the dissimilarities and inequalities among men which give rise to the notion of honor; as such differences become less, it grows feeble; and when they disappear, it will vanish too.

• The genius of democracies is seen not only in the great number of new words introduced but even more in the new ideas they express.

• Born often under another sky, placed in the middle of an always moving scene, himself driven by the irresistible torrent which draws all about him, the American has no time to tie himself to anything, he grows accustomed only to change, and ends by regarding it as the natural state of man. He feels the need of it, more he loves it; for the instability; instead of meaning disaster to him, seems to give birth only to miracles all about him.

• Those that despise people will never get the best out of others and themselves.

• The last thing a political party gives up is its vocabulary.

• The main business of religions is to purify, control, and restrain that excessive and exclusive taste for well-being which men acquire in times of equality.

• What is the most important for democracy is not that great fortunes should not exist, but that great fortunes should not remain in the same hands. In that way there are rich men, but they do not form a class.

• The whole life of an American is passed like a game of chance, a revolutionary crisis, or a battle.

• The most dangerous moment for a bad government is when it begins to reform.

• Though it is very important for man as an individual that his religion should be true, that is not the case for society. Society has nothing to fear or hope from another life; what is most important for it is not that all citizens profess the true religion but that they should profess religion.

• When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness.

• Life is to entered upon with courage.

• 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.