Alexis de Tocqueville Quotes - Page 10

Quotes about:

• I know without needing to hear the voice of the Creator that the stars trace out in space the orbits which His hand has drawn.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Stars, Hands, Voice

  "Democracy in America". Book by Alexis de Tocqueville. Introduction, 1835.

  4 Copy quote

• The Indian knew how to live without wants, to suffer without complaint, and to die singing.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Singing, Suffering, Want

  Alexis de Tocqueville (1990). “Democracy in America”

  8 Copy quote

• The foremost or indeed sole condition required in order to succeed in centralizing the supreme power in a democratic community is to love equality or to get men to believe you love it. Thus, the science of despotism, which was once so complex, has been simplified and reduced, as it were, to a single principle.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Believe, Men, Order

  Alexis de Tocqueville (1847). “Democracy in America”

  4 Copy quote

• We need a new political science for a new world.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Political, Needs, World

  Alexis de Tocqueville, Jennifer Pitts (2001). “Writings on Empire and Slavery”, p.11, JHU Press

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  10 Copy quote

• The whole life of an American is passed like a game of chance, a revolutionary crisis, or a battle.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Games, America, Battle

  Alexis de Tocqueville (1873). “American Institutions and Their Influence”, p.432

  7 Copy quote

• Democracy does not create strong ties between people. But it does make living together easier.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Strong, Freedom, Ties

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Strong, Heart, Men

  "Democracy in America" by Alexis de Tocqueville, Volume I, Chapter III, Part I, 1835.

  4 Copy quote

• A newspaper is an adviser who does not require to be sought, but who comes of his own accord, and talks to you briefly every day of the common wealth, without distracting you from your private affairs.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Doe, Common, Wealth

  4 Copy quote

• Democracy encourages a taste for physical gratification; this taste, if it becomes excessive, soon disposes men to believe that all is matter only; and materialism, in its turn, hurries them on with mad impatience to these same delights; such is the fatal circle within which democratic nations are driven round. It were well that they should see the danger and hold back.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Believe, Men, Circles

  Alexis de Tocqueville (2015). “Democracy in America - Vol. I. and II.”, p.599, Read Books Ltd

  9 Copy quote

• Despotism may be able to do without religion, but democracy cannot.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Christian, Religious, Democracy

  4 Copy quote

• America is a land of wonders, in which everything is in constant motion and every change seems an improvement.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Land, America, Improvement

  Alexis De Tocqueville (1863). “Democracy In America -- Vol. 1”, p.547

  4 Copy quote

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

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Religious, Men, Self

  Alexis de Tocqueville (2004). “Tocqueville: Democracy in America”, p.615, Library of America

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• Among a democratic people, where there is no hereditary wealth, every man works to earn a living, or is born of parents who have worked. The notion of labor is therefore presented to the mind, on every side, as the necessary, natural, and honest condition.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Work, Men, People

  Alexis de Tocqueville (1863). “Democracy in America”, p.184

  5 Copy quote

• The most formidable of all the ills that threaten the future of the Union arises from the presence of a black population upon its territory; and in contemplating the cause of the present embarrassments, or the future dangers of the United States, the observer is invariably led to this as a primary fact.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Black, Causes, Facts

  Alexis de Tocqueville, Henry Reeve, Francis Bowen, Patrick Renshaw (1998). “Democracy in America”, p.140, Wordsworth Editions

  5 Copy quote

• Democratic institutions generally give men a lofty notion of their country and themselves.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Country, Men, Giving

  Alexis de Tocqueville (1863). “Democracy in America”, p.210

  4 Copy quote

• The last thing abandoned by a party is its phraseology.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Party, Lasts, Abandoned

  Alexis de Tocqueville (1861). “Memoir, Letters, and Remains of Alexis de Tocqueville”, p.277

  4 Copy quote

• [Liberty] considers religion as the safeguard of morality, and morality as the best security of law and the surest pledge of the duration of freedom.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Law, Liberty, Duration

  Alexis de Tocqueville (1862). “Democracy in America”, p.55

  7 Copy quote

• In countries where associations are free, secret societies are unknown. In America there are factions, but no conspiracies.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Country, America, Secret

  Democracy in America vol. 2, ch. 4 (1835) (translation by Henry Reeve)

  8 Copy quote

• I shall not fear to say that the doctrine of self-interest rightly understood seems to me of all the philosophic theories the most appropriate to the needs of men in our time, and that I see in it the most powerful guarantee against themselves that remains to them. The minds of the moralists of our day ought to turn, therefore, principally toward it. Even should they judge it imperfect, they would still have to adopt it as necessary.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Powerful, Men, Self

  5 Copy quote

• In America, conscription is unknown; men are enlisted for payment. Compulsory recruitment is so alien to the ideas and so foreign to the customs of the people of the United States that I doubt whether they would ever dare to introduce it into their law.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Men, America, Law

  "Democracy in America". Book by Alexis de Tocqueville. Chapter XIII, 1835.

  26 Copy quote

• It is almost never when a state of things is the most detestable that it is smashed, but when, beginning to improve, it permits men to breathe, to reflect, to communicate their thoughts with each other, and to gauge by what they already have the extent of their rights and their grievances. The weight, although less heavy, seems then all the more unbearable.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Men, Rights, Gauges

  Alexis de Tocqueville, Roger Boesche, James Toupin (1986). “Selected Letters on Politics and Society”, p.296, Univ of California Press

  11 Copy quote

• Among the droves of men with political ambitions in the United States, I found very few with that virile candor, that manly independence of thought, that often distinguished Americans in earlier times and that is invariably the preeminent trait of great characters wherever it exists.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Character, Ambition, Men

  Alexis de Tocqueville, Arthur Goldhammer (2004). “Democracy in America”, p.297, Library of America

  8 Copy quote

• They all attributed the peaceful dominion of religion in their country mainly to the separation of church and state. I do not hesitate to affirm that during my stay in America I did not
  meet a single individual, of the clergy or the laity, who was not of the same opinion on this point.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Country, America, Peaceful

  Alexis de Tocqueville, Henry Reeve, Francis Bowen, Patrick Renshaw (1998). “Democracy in America”, p.121, Wordsworth Editions

  4 Copy quote

Page 10 of 13

First

← Prev

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin