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

301. “What frightens me most is the danger that, amid all the constant trivial preoccupations of private life, ambition may lose both its force and its greatness, that human passions may grow gentler and at the same time baser, with the result that the progress of the body social may become daily quieter and less aspiring.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

302. “I do not assert that the ostensible end, or even that the secret aim, of American parties is to promote the rule of aristocracy or democracy in the country; but I affirm that aristocratic or democratic passions may easily be detected at the bottom of all parties, and that, although they escape a superficial observation, they are the main point and the very soul of every faction in the United States.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

303. “But what most astonishes me in the United States, is not so much the marvelous grandeur of some undertakings, as the innumerable multitude of small ones.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

304. “In democratic countries as well as elsewhere most of the branches of productive industry are carried on at a small cost by men little removed by their wealth or education above the level of those whom they employ.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

305. “The whole military power of the State is at the disposal of the Governor. He is the commander of the militia, and head of the armed force.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

306. “I cannot believe that a republic could subsist if the influence of the lawyers in public business did not increase in proportion to the power of the people.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

307. “Provincial liberties can subsist for a time without national liberty when those liberties are ancient and linked to habit, mores, and memories, while despotism is new. But it is unreasonable to think that one can create local liberties at will or even maintain them for long if general liberty is suppressed.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

308. “The moderns, then, after they have abolished slavery, have three prejudices to contend against, which are less easy to attack and far less easy to conquer than the mere fact of servitude: the prejudice of the master, the prejudice of the race, and the prejudice of color.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

309. “I have always thought that in revolutions, especially democratic revolutions, madmen, not those so called by courtesy, but genuine madmen, have played a very considerable political part. One thing is certain, and that is that a condition of semi-madness is not unbecoming at such times, and often even leads to success.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

310. “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.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

311. “December, 1865, of the celebrated 13th article or amendment of the Constitution, which declared that “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude – except as a punishment for crime – shall exist within the United States.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

312. “People sought reforms, not rights. Had the throne then been occupied by a monarch of the calibre and character of Frederick the Great, I have no doubt he would have accomplished many of the reforms which were brought about by the Revolution; and that not only without endangering his throne, but with a large gain of power.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

313. “The more I view the independence of the press in its principal effects, the more I convince myself that among the moderns the independence of the press is the capital and so to speak the constitutive element of freedom.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

314. “You may be sure that if you succeed in bringing your audience into the presence of something that affects them, they will not care by what road you brought them there; and they will never reproach you for having excited their emotions in spite of dramatic rules.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

315. “The personal opinions of the editors have no kind of weight in the eyes of the public: the only use of a journal is, that it imparts the knowledge of certain facts, and it is only by altering or distorting those facts that a journalist can contribute to the support of his own views.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

316. “I must say that I have seen Americans make great and real sacrifices to the public welfare; and have noticed a hundred instances in which they hardly ever failed to lend faithful support to one another.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

317. “In the laws of Connecticut, as well as in all those of New England, we find the germ and gradual development of that township independence which is the life and mainspring of American liberty at the present day.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

318. “In cases of invasion or insurrection, if the town-officers neglect to furnish the necessary stores and ammunition for the militia, the township may be condemned to a fine of from $200 to $500. It may readily be imagined that in such a case it might happen that no one cared to prosecute; hence the law adds that all the citizens may indict offences of this kind, and that half of the fine shall belong to the plaintiff. See Act of March 6, 1810, vol. ii. p. 236.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

319. “Without common ideas, there is no common action, and without common action men still exist, but a social body does not. Thus in order that there be society, and all the more, that this society prosper, it is necessary that all the minds of the citizens always be brought together and held together by some principle ideas.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

320. “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.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

321. “He had a strong conviction that no government could be ordained that could resist these internal forces, when, they are directed to its destruction by bad men, or unreasoning mobs, and many then believed, as some yet believe, that our government is unequal to such pressure, when the assault is thoroughly desperate.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

322. “When the question is reduced to the simple expression of the struggle between poverty and wealth, the tendency of each side of the dispute becomes perfectly evident without further controversy.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

323. “In the United States, if a political character attacks a sect, this may not prevent even the partisans of that very sect, from supporting him; but if he attacks all the sects together, every one abandons him and he remains alone.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

324. “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.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

325. “The more I advanced in the study of American society, the more I perceived that the equality of conditions is the fundamental fact from which all others seem to be derived, and the central point at which all my observations constantly terminated.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

326. “The last thing abandoned by a party is its phraseology, because among political parties, as elsewhere, the vulgar make the language, and the vulgar abandon more easily the ideas that have been instilled into it than the words that it has learnt.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

327. “I am unacquainted with a more deplorable spectacle than that of a people unable either to defend or to maintain its independence.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

328. “Has such been the fate of the centuries which have preceded our own? and has man always inhabited a world like the present, where nothing is linked together, where virtue is without genius, and genius without honor; where the love of order is confounded with a taste for oppression, and the holy rites of freedom with a contempt of law; where the light thrown by conscience on human actions is dim, and where nothing seems to be any longer forbidden or allowed, honorable or shameful, false or true?”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

329. “It was not man who implanted in himself what is infinite and the love of what is immortal: those lofty instincts are not the offspring of his capricious will; their steadfast foundation is fixed in human nature, and they exist in spite of his efforts. He may cross and distort them – destroy them he cannot. The soul wants which must be satisfied; and whatever pains be taken to divert it from itself, it soon grows weary, restless, and disquieted amidst the enjoyments of sense.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

330. “In a democracy private citizens see a man of their own rank in life who becomes possessed of riches and power in a few years; this spectacle excites their surprise and envy, and they are led to inquire how the person who was yesterday very equal is today their ruler. To attribute his rise to his talents or his virtues is unpleasant; for it is tacitly to acknowledge that they are themselves less virtuous and less talented than he was.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

331. “In democracies, nothing is more great or more brilliant than commerce: it attracts the attention of the public, and fills the imagination of the multitude; all energetic passions are directed towards it.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

332. “Of all the countries of the world America is the one where the movement of thought and human industry is the most continuous and swift.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

333. “While he loved liberty, he detested the crimes that had been committed in its name. Jon J. Ingalls.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

334. “The tyranny of the executive power will come in its turn, but at a more distant period.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

335. “Amongst civilized nations revolts are rarely excited, except by such persons as have nothing to lose by them;.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

336. “The only authors whom I acknowledge as American are the journalists. They, indeed, are not great writers, but they speak the language of their countrymen, and make themselves heard by them.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

337. “The deeper we penetrate into the working of these parties, the more do we perceive that the object of the one is to limit, and that of the other to extend, the popular authority.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

338. “Despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

339. “And now, As I come near the end of this book in which I have recorded so many considerable achievements of the Americans, if I am asked how we should account for the unusual prosperity and growing strength of this nation, I would reply that they must be attributed to the superiority of their woman.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

340. “In the United States, the majority takes upon itself the task of supplying to the individual a mass of ready-made opinions, thus relieving him of the necessity to take the proper responsibility of arriving at his own.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

341. “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.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

342. “I see no clear reason why the doctrine of self-interest properly understood should turn men away from religious beliefs.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

343. “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.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

344. “There is in fact a manly and legitimate passion for equality that spurs all men to wish to be strong and esteemed. This passion tends to elevate the lesser to the rank of the greater. But one also finds in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to want to bring the strong down to their level, and which reduces men to preferring equality in servitude to inequality in freedom.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

345. “Everyone shuts himself up tightly within himself and insists upon judging the world from there.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

346. “Democratic communities have a natural taste for freedom: left to themselves, they will seek it, cherish it, and view any privation of it with regret. But for equality, their passion is ardent, insatiable, incessant, invincible: they call for equality in freedom; and if they cannot obtain that they still call for equality in slavery. They will endure poverty, servitude, barbarism – but they will not endure aristocracy.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville

347. “The passion for physical comforts is essentially a passion of the middle classes: with those classes it grows and spreads, with them it preponderates.”

— Alexis de Tocqueville