Quotes from Alexis de Tocqueville

Lorsque les Républiques américaines commenceront à dégénérer, je crois qu'on pourra aisément le reconnaître: il suffira de voir si le nombre des jugements politiques augmente.

In Europe, Christianity has allowed itself to be closely linked with the powers of this world. Today these powers are collapsing and it is virtually buried beneath their ruins. It has become a living body tied to the dead; if the bonds holding it were cut, it would rise again. I do not know what would have to be done to restore youthful energy to European Christianity. God alone could do this; but at least it depends upon men to leave to faith the deployment of all the strength it still has.

In the United States, therefore, the mass of the institutions of the country is essentially republican; and in order permanently to destroy the laws which form the basis of the republic, it would be necessary to abolish all the laws at once.

The courts of justice are the only possible medium between the central power and the administrative bodies; they alone can compel the elected functionary to obey, without violating the rights of the elector. The extension of judicial power in the political world ought therefore to be in the exact ratio of the extension of elective offices: if these two institutions do not go hand in hand, the State must fall into anarchy or into subjection.

One must go to America to understand what power material well-being exerts on political actions and even on opinions themselves, which ought to be subject only to reason.

In the United States religion exercises but little influence upon the laws and upon the details of public opinion, but it directs the manners of the community, and by regulating domestic life it regulates the state.

Americans often change their laws, but the foundation of the Constitution is respected.

Thus whilst the law permits the Americans to do what they please, religion prevents them from conceiving, and forbids them to commit, what is rash or unjust.

Having destroyed an aristocratic society, we seem ready to go on living complacently amid the rubble forever.

The French lawyer is simply a man extensively acquainted with the statutes of his country; but the English or American lawyer resembles the hierophants of Egypt, for, like them, he is the sole interpreter of an occult science.

A multitude of particular facts cannot be seen separately, without at last discovering the common tie which connects them.

Religion is much more necessary in the republic which they set forth in glowing colors than in the monarchy which they attack; and it is more needed in democratic republics than in any others.

The people never find the time or the means to devote to this work. They have always to come to hasty judgments and to latch on to the most obvious of features. As a result, charlatans of all kinds know full well the secret of pleasing the people whereas more often than not their real friends fail to do so.

Le despotisme, qui, de nature, est craintif, voit dans l'isolement des hommes le gage le plus certain de sa propre durée, et il met d'ordinaire tous ses soins à les isoler. Il n'est pas de vice du cÅ"ur humain qui lui agrée autant que l'égoïsme : un despote pardonne aisément aux gouvernés de ne point l'aimer, pourvu qu'ils ne s'aiment pas entre eux.

the people of the United States are so opposed to compulsory enlistment that I do not imagine it can ever be sanctioned by the laws.

Exceptional physical conditions, private interest, religion, in that it puts a brake on the inordinate taste for material wealth—these are, from the first weeks of the American journey, the three elements that profoundly marked Tocqueville's arguments.

Parties are a necessary evil in free governments.

The wealthy members of the community [in America] entertain a hearty distaste to the democratic institutions of their country. The populace is at once the object of their scorn and of their fears.

men cannot do without dogmatical belief;

Rather, he accepted democracy as an objective fact and wanted to address positive and negative lessons the French people could learn from the American example. He wrote, "I sought there the image of democracy itself, with its inclinations, its character, its prejudices, and its passions, in order to learn what we have to fear or to hope from its progress."5

Parties are a necessary evil in free governments. . . . America has . . . lost the great parties which once divided the nation; and if her happiness is considerably increased, her morality has suffered by their extinction.

But the creation of unpaid offices is to form a class of wealthy and independent officials; that is the core of an aristocracy. If the people still retain the right to choose, the exercise of that right has inevitable limitations.

The habit of inattention must be considered as the greatest bane of the democratic character

When I see that the right and the means of absolute command are conferred on any power whatever, be it called a people or a king, an aristocracy or a democracy, a monarchy or a republic, I say there is the germ of tyranny, and I seek to live elsewhere, under other laws.