Alexis de Tocqueville Quotes

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

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

All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and shortest means to accomplish it.

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

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.

As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: how much money will it bring in?

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

In no other country in the world is the love of property keener or more alert than in the United States, and nowhere else does the majority display less inclination toward doctrines which in any way threaten the way property is owned.

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.

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

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.

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.

Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith.

Life is to entered upon with courage.

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

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.

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