Quotes from Alexis de Tocqueville

The poor man retains the prejudices of his forefathers without their faith, and their ignorance without their virtues; he has adopted the doctrine of self-interest as the rule of his actions, without understanding the science which controls it, and his egotism is no less blind than his devotedness was formerly.

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.

A long war almost always places nations in the wretched alternative of being abandoned to ruin by defeat or to despotism by success.

I think that in no country in the civilized world is less attention paid to philosophy than in the United States.

No sooner does a government attempt to go beyond its political sphere and to enter upon this new track, than it exercises, even unintentionally, an insupportable tyranny; for a government can only dictate strict rules, the opinions which it favors are rigidly enforced, and it is never easy to discriminate between its advice and its commands.

In no country has such constant care been taken as in America to trace two clearly distinct lines of action for the two sexes...

Whoever seeks anything from freedom but freedom itself is doomed to slavery.

In no country in the civilized world is less attention paid to philosophy than in the United States.

There is in fact a manly and legitimate passion for equality that incites men to want all to be strong and esteemed. This passion tends to elevate the small to the rank of the great; but one also encounters a depraved taste for equality in the human heart that brings the weak to want to draw the strong to their level and that reduces men to preferring equality in servitude to inequality in freedom.

Nowhere do citizens seem more insignificant than in a democratic nation.

Democratic laws generally tend to promote the welfare of the greatest possible number; for they emanate from the majority of the citizens, who are subject to error, but who cannot have an interest opposed to their own advantage. The laws of an aristocracy tend, on the contrary, to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of the minority, because an aristocracy, by its very nature, constitutes a minority.

I readily discovered the prodigious influence that this primary fact exercises on the whole course of society; it gives a peculiar direction to public opinion and a peculiar tenor to the laws; it imparts new maxims to the governing authorities and peculiar habits to the governed.

If a democratic state of society and democratic institutions do not stop the career of the human mind, they incontestably guide it in one direction in preference to another. Their effects, thus circumscribed, are still exceedingly great; and I trust I may be pardoned if I pause for a moment to survey them. We had occasion, in speaking of the philosophical method of the American people, to make several remarks which must here be turned to account.

if the Supreme Court is ever composed of imprudent men or bad citizens, the Union may be plunged into anarchy or civil war.

The writer's beliefs and convictions heighten his language. In our eyes, as well as in his own, it is no longer a band of adventurers seeking their fortune beyond the seas; it is the germ of a great nation which God has placed upon a predestined shore.

Democratic nations often hate those in whose hands the central power is vested; but they love that power itself.

Never was such a great event, with such ancient causes, so well prepared and so little foreseen.

I passionately love liberty, legality, respect for rights, but not democracy. That is what I find in the depth of my soul.

They were prepared for everything except what actually happened.

Je hais, pour ma part, ces systèmes absolus, qui font dépendre tous les événements de l'histoire de quelques causes premières se liant les unes aux autres par une chaîne fatale, et qui suppriment, pour ainsi dire, les hommes de l'histoire du genre humain. Je les trouve étroits dans leur prétendue grandeur, et faux sous leurs airs de vérités mathématiques.

The love of wealth is . . . to be traced, either as a principal or an accessory motive, at the bottom of all that the Americans do...

Democratic nations often hate those in whose hands the central power is vested; but they always love that power itself.

An individual so different from all the others, so independent, so favored, destroys or weakens the rule of law.

One sees that history is an art gallery where there are few originals and many copies.