Quotes By Alexis De Tocqueville

The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.

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.

In other words, a democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it.

An American cannot converse, but he can discuss, and his talk falls into a dissertation. He speaks to you as if he was addressing a meeting; and if he should chance to become warm in the discussion, he will say "Gentlemen" to the person with whom he is conversing.

Life is to be entered upon with courage.

The Americans combine the notions of religion and liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive of one without the other.

I cannot help fearing that men may reach a point where they look on every new theory as a danger, every innovation as a toilsome trouble, every social advance as a first step toward revolution, and that they may absolutely refuse to move at all.

In America the majority raises formidable barriers around the liberty of opinion; within these barriers an author may write what he pleases, but woe to him if he goes beyond them.

Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.

I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America.

The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.

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

There are two things which a democratic people will always find very difficult - to begin a war and to end it.

In politics shared hatreds are almost always the basis of friendships.

A democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it.

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

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.

Consider any individual at any period of his life, and you will always find him preoccupied with fresh plans to increase his comfort.

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.

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.

Grant me thirty years of equal division of inheritances and a free press, and I will provide you with a republic.

Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.

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.

Those that despise people will never get the best out of others and themselves.

No protracted war can fail to endanger the freedom of a democratic country.

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

History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.

The genius of democracies is seen not only in the great number of new words introduced but even more in the new ideas they express.

There is hardly a pioneer's hut which does not contain a few odd volumes of Shakespeare. I remember reading the feudal drama of Henry V for the first time in a log cabin.

In a revolution, as in a novel, the most difficult part to invent is the end.