Quotes By Alexis De Tocqueville

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

What is most important for democracy is not that great fortunes should not exist, but that great fortunes should not remain in the same hands. In that way there are rich men, but they do not form a class.

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.

The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democratic paint, but from time to time one can see the old aristocratic colours breaking through.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.