Top 300 Alexis de Tocqueville Quotes (2024 Update)
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251. “When a large number of organs of the press come to advance along the same track, their influence becomes almost irresistible in the long term, and public opinion, struck always from the same side, ends by yielding under their blows.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

252. “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.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

253. “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.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

254. “I observed that equality of condition, though it has not there reached the extreme limit which it seems to have attained in the United States, is constantly approaching it; and that the democracy which governs the American communities appears to be rapidly rising into power in Europe.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

255. “In countries where associations are free, secret societies are unknown. In America there are factions, but no conspiracies.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

256. “By granting to the senators the privilege of being chosen for several years, and being renewed seriatim, the law takes care to preserve in the legislative body a nucleus of men already accustomed to public business, and capable of exercising a salutary influence upon the junior members.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

257. “The most durable monument of human labor is that which recalls the wretchedness and nothingness of man.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

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

— Alexis de Tocqueville

259. “What one must fear, moreover, is not so much the sight of the immorality of the great as that of immorality leading to greatness.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

260. “Among the droves of men with political ambitions in the United States, I found very few with that virile candor, that manly independence of thought, that often distinguished Americans in earlier times and that is invariably the preeminent trait of great characters wherever it exists.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

261. “Town-meetings are to liberty what primary schools are to science; they bring it within the people’s reach, they teach men how to use and how to enjoy it.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

262. “Every nation that has ended in tyranny has come to that end by way of good order. It certainly does not follow from this that peoples should scorn public peace, but neither should they be satisfied with that and nothing more. A nation that asks nothing of government but the maintenance of order is already a slave in the depths of its heart; it is a slave of its well-being, ready for the man who will put it in chains.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

263. “There are people in Europe who, confounding together the different characteristics of the sexes, would make of man and woman beings not only equal but alike. They would give to both the same functions, impose on both the same duties, and grant to both the same rights; they would mix them in all things – their occupations, their pleasures, their business.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

264. “When, after having examined in detail the organization of the Supreme Court, one comes to consider in sum the prerogatives that have been given it, one discovers without difficulty that a more immense judicial power has never been constituted in any people.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

265. “If the maladministration of the democracy ever brings about a revolutionary crisis, and if monarchical institutions ever become practicable in the United States, the truth of what I advance will become obvious.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

266. “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.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

267. “There is no more invariable rule in the history of society: the further electoral rights are extended, the greater is the need of extending them; for after each concession the strength of the democracy increases, and its demands increase with its strength.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

268. “In democratic times, enjoyment is keener than in aristocratic centuries, and above all the number of those who taste it is infinitely greater; but on the other hand, one must recognize that hopes and desires are more often disappointed, souls more arouse and more restive, and cares more burning.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

269. “To commit violent and unjust acts, it is not enough for a government to have the will or even the power; the habits, ideas and passions of the time must lend themselves to their committal.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

270. “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.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

271. “The will of the nation is one of those phrases most widely abused by schemers and tyrants of all ages.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

272. “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.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

273. “I am of opinion that a central administration enervates the nations in which it exists by incessantly diminishing their public spirit.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

274. “It is an axiom of political science in the United States that the sole means of neutralizing the effects of newspapers is to multiply their number.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

275. “It profits me but little, after all, that a vigilant authority always protects the tranquility of my pleasures and constantly averts all dangers from my path, without my care or concern, if this same authority is the absolute master of my liberty and my life...”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

276. “Men are much more forcibly struck by those inequalities which exist within the circle of the same class, than with those which may be remarked between different classes. It is more easy for them to admit slavery, than to allow several millions of citizens to exist under a load of eternal infamy and hereditary wretchedness.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

277. “The pursuit of wealth generally diverts men of great talents and of great passions from the pursuit of power, and it very frequently happens that a man does not undertake to direct the fortune of the State until he has discovered his incompetence to conduct his own affairs.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

278. “It is easy to see that, even in the freedom of early youth, an American girl never quite loses control of herself; she enjoys all permitted pleasures without losing her head about any of them, and her reason never lets the reins go, though it may often seem to let them flap.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

279. “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.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

280. “The best laws cannot make a constitution work in spite of morals; morals can turn the worst laws to advantage. That is a commonplace truth, but one to which my studies are always bringing me back. It is the central point in my conception. I see it at the end of all my reflections.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

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

— Alexis de Tocqueville

282. “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.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

283. “The regime which is destroyed by a revolution is almost always an improvement on its immediate predecessor, and experience teaches that the most critical moment for bad governments is the one which witnesses their first steps toward reform.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

284. “Man did not give himself the taste for the infinite and the love of what is immortal. These sublime instincts are not born of a caprice of his will; they have their immovable foundations in his nature; they exist despite his efforts. He can hinder or deform them, but not destroy them. The soul has needs that must be satisfied; and whatever care one takes to distract it from itself, it soon becomes bored, restive, and agitated.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

285. “No state of society or laws can render men so much alike but that education, fortune, and tastes will interpose some differences between them; and though different men may sometimes find it their interest to combine for the same purposes, they will never make it their pleasure.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

286. “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.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

287. “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.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

288. “The American revolution broke out, and the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people, which had been nurtured in the townships and municipalities, took possession of the State: every class was enlisted in its cause; battles were fought, and victories obtained for it, until it became the law of laws.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

289. “Despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot. How is it possible that society should escape destruction if the moral tie is not strengthened in proportion as the political tie is relaxed? And what can be done with a people who are their own masters if they are not submissive to the Deity?”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

290. “An American cannot converse, but he can discuss, and his talk falls into a dissertation. He speaks to you as if he was addressing a meeting; and if he should chance to become warm in the discussion, he will say ‘Gentlemen’ to the person with whom he is conversing.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

291. “When fortune has been abolished, when every profession is open to everyone, an ambitious man may think it is easy to launch himself on a great career and feel that he has been called to no common destiny. But this is a delusion which experience quickly corrects.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

292. “When the English adopted the institution of the jury, they were a half-barbaric people; they have since become one of the most enlightened nations of the globe, and their attachment to the jury has seemed to increase with their enlightenment.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

293. “The South, which is peopled with ardent and irascible beings, is becoming more irritated and alarmed.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

294. “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.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

295. “But a people, having taken its rise in civilization and democracy, which should gradually establish an inequality of conditions, until it arrived at inviolable privileges and exclusive castes, would be a novelty in the world; and nothing intimates that America is likely to furnish so singular an example.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

296. “All revolutions more or less threaten the tenure of property: but most of those who live in democratic countries are possessed of property – not only are they possessed of property but they live in the condition of men who set the greatest store upon their property.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

297. “The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democratic paint, but from time to time one can see the old aristocratic colours breaking through.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

298. “A certain degree of power must be granted to public officers, for they would be of no use without it. But the ostensible semblance of authority is by no means indispensable to the conduct of affairs, and it is needlessly offensive to the susceptibility of the public.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

299. “Among the laws controlling human societies there is one more precise and clearer, it seems to me, than all the others. If men are to remain civilized or to become civilized, the art of association must develop and improve among them at the same speed as equality of conditions spreads.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

300. “What good is it to me to have an authority always ready to see to the tranquil enjoyment of my pleasures, to brush away all dangers from my path without my having to think about them, if such an authority, as well as removing thorns from under my feet, is also the absolute master of my freedom or if it so takes over all activity and life that around it all must languish when it languishes, sleep when it sleeps and perish when it perishes.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville