Alexis Tocqueville Quotes (35 Quotes)


    In democratic ages men rarely sacrifice themselves for another, but they show a general compassion for all the human race. One never sees them inflict pointless suffering, and they are glad to relieve the sorrows of others when they can do so without much trouble to themselves. They are not disinterested, but they are gentle.

    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.

    Nothing is quite so wretchedly corrupt as an aristocracy which has lost its power but kept its wealth and which still has endless leisure to devote to nothing but banal enjoyments. All its great thoughts and passionate energy are things of the past, and nothing but a host of petty, gnawing vices now cling to it like worms to a corpse.

    I must say that I have seen Americans make great and real sacrifices to the public welfare and have noticed a hundred instances in which they hardly ever failed to lend faithful support to one another.

    If ever America undergoes great revolutions, they will be brought about by the presence of the black race on the soil of the United States.


    I should have loved freedom, I believe, at all times, but in the time in which we live I am ready to worship it


    By and large the literature of a democracy will never exhibit the order, regularity, skill, and art characteristic of aristocratic literature formal qualities will be neglected or actually despised. The style will often be strange, incorrect, overburdened, and loose, and almost always strong and bold. Writers will be more anxious to work quickly than to perfect details. Short works will be commoner than long books, wit than erudition, imagination than depth. There will be a rude and untutored vigor of thought with great variety and singular fecundity. Authors will strive to astonish more than to please, and to stir passions rather than to charm taste.

    Not only does democracy make every man forget his ancestors, but also clouds their view of their descendants and isolates them from their contemporaries. Each man is for ever thrown back on himself alone, and there is danger that he may be shut up in the solitude of his own heart.

    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.

    By obliging men to turn their attention to other affairs then their own, it rubs off that private selfishness which is the rust of society.

    For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living

    When an opinion has taken root in a democracy and established itself in the minds of the majority, if afterward persists by itself, needing no effort to maintain it since no one attacks it. Those who at first rejected it as false come in the end to adopt it as accepted, and even those who still at the bottom of their hearts oppose it keep their views to themselves, taking great care to avoid a dangerous and futile contest.

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

    However energetically society in general may strive to make all the citizens equal and alike, the personal pride of each individual will always make him try to escape from the common level, and he will form some inequality somewhere to his own profit.

    Two things in America are astonishing the changeableness of most human behavior and the strange stability of certain principles. Men are constantly on the move, but the spirit of humanity seems almost unmoved.

    There are two things which will always be very difficult for a democratic nation to start a war and to end it.

    In America there are so many ways to make a living that a man usually doesn't turn to politics until he has failed at everything else.

    The best laws cannot make a constitution work in spite of morals morals can turn the worst laws to advantage. That is a commonplace truth, but one to which my studies are always bringing me back. It is the central point in my conception. I see it at the end of all my reflections.

    With much care and skill power has been broken into fragments in the American township, so that the maximum possible number of people have some concern with public affairs

    I am obliged to confess that I do not regard the abolition of slavery as a means of warding off the struggle of the two races in the Southern states. The Negroes may long remain slaves without complaining but if they are once raised to the level of freemen, they will soon revolt at being deprived of almost all their civil rights and as they cannot become the equals of the whites, they will speedily show themselves as enemies.

    Scarcely any political question arises in the United States that is not resolved, sooner or later, into a judicial question.

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

    The Americans never use the word peasant, because they have no idea of the class which that term denotes the ignorance of more remote ages, the simplicity of rural life, and the rusticity of the villager have not been preserved among them and they are alike unacquainted with the virtues, the vices, the coarse habits, and the simple graces of an early stage of civilization.

    The principle of equality does not destroy the imagination, but lowers its flight to the level of the earth.

    I know of no other country where love of money has such a grip on men's hearts.

    Though it is very important for man as an individual that his religion should be true, that is not the case for society. Society has nothing to fear or hope from another life what is most important for it is not that all citizens profess the true religion but that they should profess religion.

    In America a woman loses her independence for ever in the bonds of matrimony. While there is less constraint on girls there than anywhere else, a wife submits to stricter obligations. For the former, her father's house is a home of freedom and pleasure for the latter, her husband's is almost a cloister.

    America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.

    Countries, therefore, when lawmaking falls exclusively to the lot of the poor cannot hope for much economy in public expenditure expenses will always be considerable, either because taxes cannot touch those who vote for them or because they are asse

    Trade is the natural enemy of all violent passions. Trade loves moderation, delights in compromise, and is most careful to avoid anger. It is patient, supple, and insinuating, only resorting to extreme measures in cases of absolute necessity. Trade makes men independent of one another and gives them a high idea of their personal importance it leads them to want to manage their own affairs and teaches them to succeed therein. Hence it makes them inclined to liberty but disinclined to revolution.

    turn against themselves and consider their hopes as having been childish--their enthusiasm and, above all, their devotion absurd.

    Born often under another sky, placed in the middle of an always moving scene, himself driven by the irresistible torrent which draws all about him, the American has no time to tie himself to anything, he grows accustomed only to change, and ends by regarding it as the natural state of man. He feels the need of it, more he loves it for the instability instead of meaning disaster to him, seems to give birth only to miracles all about him.

    It is easy to see that, even in the freedom of early youth, an American girl never quite loses control of herself she enjoys all permitted pleasures without losing her head about any of them, and her reason never lets the reins go, though it may oft

    The will of the nation' is one of those expressions which have been most profusely abused by the wily and the despotic of every age


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