Quotes from Alexis de Tocqueville

A long war almost always places nations in this sad alternative: that their defeat delivers them to destruction and their triumph to despotism.

He was as great as a man can be without morality.

The most dangerous moment for a bad government is when it begins to reform.

How could a society escape destruction if, when political ties are relaxed, moral ties are not tightened, and what can be done with a people master of itself if it not subject to God?

There are many men of principle in both parties in America, but there is no party of principle.

The man who asks of freedom anything other than itself is born to be a slave.

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.

It is the dissimilarities and inequalities among men which give rise to the notion of honor; as such differences become less, it grows feeble; and when they disappear, it will vanish too.

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

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.

We can state with conviction, therefore, that a man's support for absolute government is in direct proportion to the contempt he feels for his country.

As the past has ceased to throw its light upon the future, the mind of man wanders in obscurity.

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.

I know of no other country where love of money has such a grip on men's hearts or where stronger scorn is expressed for the theory of permanent equality of property

The more alike men are, the weaker each feels in the face of all.

He [Napoleon] was as great as a man can be without morality.

The taste which men have for liberty and that which they feel for equality are, in fact, two different things...among democratic nations they are two unequal things.

Righteous women in their circle of influence, beginning in the home, can turn the world around.

If I were asked ... to what the singular prosperity and growing strength of Americans ought mainly to be attributed, I should reply: To the superiority of their women.

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

In the United States, the majority undertakes to supply a multitude of ready-made opinions for the use of individuals, who are thus relieved from the necessity of forming opinions of their own.

Nothing seems at first sight less important than the outward form of human actions, yet there is nothing upon which men set more store: they grow used to everything except to living in a society which has not their own manners.

The debates of that great assembly are frequently vague and perplexed, seeming to be dragged rather than to march, to the intended goal. Something of this sort must, I think, always happen in public democratic assemblies.

Nothing is more wonderful than the art of being free, but nothing is harder to learn how to use than freedom.