Alexis de Tocqueville Quotes About Prosperity

Quotes about: Prosperity

• It is odd to watch with what feverish ardour Americans pursue prosperity, ever tormented by the shadowy suspicion that they might not have chosen the shortest route to get it. They cleave to the things of this world as if assured they will never die, and yet rush to snatch any that comes within their reach, as if they expected to stop living before relishing them. Death steps in, in the end, and stops them, before they have grown tired of this futile pursuit of that complete felicity which always escapes them.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Tired, Watches, World

• There is, indeed, a most dangerous passage in the history of a democratic people. When the taste for physical gratifications among them has grown more rapidly than their education and their experience of free institutions, the time will come when men are carried away and lose all self-restraint at the sight of new possessions they are about to obtain. In their intense and exclusive anxiety to make a fortune they lose sight of the close connection that exists between the private fortune of each and the prosperity of all.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Men, Sight, Self

• On close inspection, we shall find that religion, and not fear, has ever been the cause of the long-lived prosperity of an absolute government.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Fear, Government, Long

  Alexis De Tocqueville (2004). “Democracy in America: The Complete and Unabridged Volumes I and II”, p.95, Bantam Classics

• The nations of our time cannot prevent the conditions of men from becoming equal, but it depends upon themselves whether the principle of equality is to lead them to servitude or freedom, to knowledge or barbarism, to prosperity or wretchedness.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Wisdom, Men, Principles

  Alexis de Tocqueville (1863). “Democracy in America”, p.412

• 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.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Education, Women, Growing

  Democracy in America vol. 2, sec. 3, ch. 12 (1840) (translation by Henry Reeve)

• The taste for well-being is the prominent and indelible feature of democratic times.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Taste, Prosperity, Democratic

  Alexis de Tocqueville (1863). “Democracy in America”, p.30

• I have no hesitation in saying that although the American woman never leaves her domestic sphere and is in some respects very dependent within it, nowhere does she enjoy a higher station. And if anyone asks me what I think the chief cause of the extraordinary prosperity and growing power of this nation, I should answer that it is due to the superiority of their women.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Women, Thinking, Doe

  "Democracy in America". Book by Alexis de Tocqueville, Volume II. Book Three, Chapter XII, 1840.

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