Top 300 Alexis de Tocqueville Quotes (2024 Update)
Page 4 of 7

151. “Can it be believed that the democracy which overthrew the feudal system and vanquished kings will retreat before tradesmen and capitalists?”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

152. “When the inhabitant of a democratic country compares himself individually with all those about him, he feels with pride that he is the equal of any one of them; but when he comes to survey the totality of his fellows, and to place himself in contrast to so huge a body, he is instantly overwhelmed by the sense of his own insignificance and weakness.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

153. “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.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

154. “He was as great as a man can be without morality.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

155. “Theatre is the most democratic side of literature.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

156. “The American republics have no standing armies to intimidate a discontented minority; but as no minority has as yet been reduced to declare open war, the necessity of an army has not been felt.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

157. “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

158. “What chiefly diverts the men of democracies from lofty ambition is not the scantiness of their fortunes, but the vehemence of the exertions they daily make to improve them.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

159. “I am far from denying that newspapers in democratic countries lead citizens to do very ill-considered things in common; but without newspapers there would be hardly any common action at all. So they mend many more ills than they cause.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

160. “If an American was condemned to confine his activity to his own affairs, he would be robbed of one half of his existence.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

161. “Nothing is more striking to an European traveller in the United States than the absence of what we term the Government, or the Administration.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

162. “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.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

163. “When I refuse to obey an unjust law, I do not contest the right of the majority to command, but I simply appeal from the sovereignty of the people to the sovereignty of mankind.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

164. “Nothing is more repugnant to the human mind in an age of equality than the idea of subjection to forms.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

165. “The free worker receives a wage; the slave an education, food, care, clothing; the money that the master spends to keep the slave is drained little by little and in detail; one hardly perceives it.1.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

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

— Alexis de Tocqueville

167. “I studied the Koran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Muhammad.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

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

— Alexis de Tocqueville

169. “The Americans make associations to give entertainment, to found seminaries, to build inns, to construct churches, to diffuse books, to send missionaries to the antipodes; in this manner, they found hospitals, prisons and schools.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

170. “The nation, taken as a whole, will be less brilliant, less glorious, and perhaps less strong; but the majority of the citizens will enjoy a greater degree of prosperity, and the people will remain quiet, not because it despairs of amelioration, but because it is conscious of the advantages of its condition.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

171. “Useful undertakings which require sustained attention and vigorous precision in order to succeed often end up by being abandoned, for, in America, as elsewhere, the people move forward by sudden impulses and short-lived efforts.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

172. “Men will not receive the truth from their enemies, and it is seldom offered to them by their friends...”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

173. “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.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

174. “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.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

175. “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.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

176. “One’s love for despotism is in exact proportion to one’s contempt for one’s country.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

177. “Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

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

— Alexis de Tocqueville

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

— Alexis de Tocqueville

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

— Alexis de Tocqueville

181. “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.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

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

— Alexis de Tocqueville

183. “In the principle of equality I very clearly discern two tendencies; one leading the mind of every man to untried thoughts, the other prohibiting him from thinking at all.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

184. “Among a democratic people, where there is no hereditary wealth, every man works to earn a living, or is born of parents who have worked. The notion of labor is therefore presented to the mind, on every side, as the necessary, natural, and honest condition.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

185. “When justice is more certain and more mild, is at the same time more efficacious.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

186. “It is the civil jury that really saved the liberties of England.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

187. “No protracted war can fail to endanger the freedom of a democratic country.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

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

— Alexis de Tocqueville

189. “The man who submits to violence is debased by his compliance; but when he submits to that right of authority which he acknowledges in a fellow creature, he rises in some measure above the person who give the command.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

190. “Although men cannot become absolutely equal unless they be entirely free, and consequently equality, pushed to its furthest extent, may be confounded with freedom, yet there is good reason for distinguishing the one from the other.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

191. “Nobody is going to occupy a place higher than I.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

192. “Men cannot abandon their religious faith without a kind of aberration of intellect and a sort of violent distortion of their true nature; they are invincibly brought back to more pious sentiments. Unbelief is an accident, and faith is the only permanent state of mankind.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

193. “No true power can be founded among men which does not depend upon the free union of their inclinations; and patriotism and religion are the only two motives in the world which can permanently direct the whole of the body politic to one end.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

194. “It must never be forgotten that religion gave birth to Anglo-American society.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

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

— Alexis de Tocqueville

196. “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.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

197. “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.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

198. “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.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

199. “When the reality of power has been surrendered, it’s playing a dangerous game to seek to retain the appearance of it; the external aspect of vigor can sometimes support a debilitated body, but most often it manages to deal it the final blow.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

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

— Alexis de Tocqueville