Alexis de Tocqueville Quotes

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Alexis de Tocqueville

Profession : Historian

Birth : July 29, 1805

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.

Alexis de Tocqueville

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.

Alexis de Tocqueville

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.

Alexis de Tocqueville

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

Alexis de Tocqueville

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

Alexis de Tocqueville

The French want no-one to be their superior. The English want inferiors. The Frenchman constantly raises his eyes above him with anxiety. The Englishman lowers his beneath him with satisfaction.

Alexis de Tocqueville

The power of the periodical press is second only to that of the people.

Alexis de Tocqueville

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

Alexis de Tocqueville

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.

Alexis de Tocqueville

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

Alexis de Tocqueville

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.

Alexis de Tocqueville

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

Alexis de Tocqueville

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

Alexis de Tocqueville

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

Alexis de Tocqueville

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.

Alexis de Tocqueville

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.

Alexis de Tocqueville

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.

Alexis de Tocqueville

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.

Alexis de Tocqueville

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.

Alexis de Tocqueville

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

Alexis de Tocqueville