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Alexis de Tocqueville

Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville (29 July 1805 – 16 April 1859) was a French political thinker and historian, most famous for his work Democracy in America.

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  • Né sous un autre ciel, placé au milieu d'un tableau toujours mouvant, poussé lui-même par le torrent irrésistible qui entraîne tout ce qui l'environne, l'Américain n'a le temps de s'attacher à rien ; il ne s'accoutume qu'au changement, et finit par le regarder comme l'état naturel à l'homme ; il en sent le besoin ; bien plus, il l'aime : car l'instabilité, au lieu de se produire à lui par des désastres, semble n'enfanter autour de lui que des prodiges...
    • 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.
    • National Character of Americans—first impressions (1831) Oeuvres complètes, vol. VIII, p. 253

  • 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?
    • Letter to Ernest de Chabrol, 9 June 1831 Tocqueville Reader, p. 41

  • Les meilleures lois ne peuvent faire marcher une constitution en dépit des mœurs ; les mœurs tirent parti des pires lois. C'est là une vérité commune, mais à laquelle mes études me ramènent sans cesse. Elle est placée dans mon esprit comme un point central. Je l'aperçois au bout de toutes mes idées.
    • 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.
    • De la supériorité des mœurs sur les lois (1831) Oeuvres complètes, vol. VIII, p. 286

  • So many of my thoughts and feelings are shared by the English that England has turned into a second native land of the mind for me.
    • Journeys to England and Ireland (1835)

  • 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.
    • Journeys to England and Ireland (1835)

  • Il était aussi grand qu'un homme puisse l'être sans la vertu.
    • He was as great as a man can be without morality.
    • Said of Napoleon (1842), "Discours de réception a L'Académie Française prononcé le 21 Avril 1842" Oeuvres complètes, vol. IX, p. 17

  • I studied the Koran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Muhammad. So far as I can see, it is the principal cause of the decadence so visible today in the Muslim world and, though less absurd than the polytheism of old, its social and political tendencies are in my opinion to be feared, and I therefore regard it as a form of decadence rather than a form of progress in relation to paganism itself.
    • Letter to Arthur de Gobineau, 22 October 1843, Tocqueville Reader, p. 229

  • We are sleeping on a volcano... A wind of revolution blows, the storm is on the horizon.
    • Speaking in the Chamber of Deputies just prior to to outbreak of revolution in Europe (1848)

  • Socialism is a new form of slavery.
    • Notes for a Speech on Socialism (1848)

  • As for me, I am deeply a democrat; this is why I am in no way a socialist. Democracy and socialism cannot go together. You can't have it both ways.
    • Notes for a Speech on Socialism (1848)

  • La démocratie étend la sphère de l'indépendence individuelle, le socialisme la reserre. La démocratie donne toute sa valeur possible à chacque homme, le socialisme fait de chaque homme un agent, un instrument, un chiffre. La démocratie et le socialisme ne se tiennent qu par un mot, l'égalité; mais remarquez la différence: la démocratie veut l'égalité dans la liberté et le socialisme veut l'égalité dans la gene et dan la servitude.
  • Translation (from Hayek, The Road to Serfdom): Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom, socialism restricts it. Democracy attaches all possible value to each man; socialism makes each man a mere agent, a mere number. 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.
    • 12 September 1848, "Discours prononcé à l'assemblée constituante le 12 Septembre 1848 sur la question du droit au travail", Oeuvres complètes, vol. IX, p. 546

  • Égalité is an expression of envy. It means, in the real heart of every Republican, " No one shall be better off than I am;" and while this is preferred to good government, good government is impossible.
    • Variant: Equality is a slogan based on envy. It signifies in the heart of every republican: "Nobody is going to occupy a place higher than I."
    • Conversation with Nassau William Senior, 22 May 1850 Nassau, p. 94

  • 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.
    • Letter to Pierre Freslon, 23 September 1853 Selected Letters, p. 296 as cited in Toqueville's Road Map p. 103

  • History, it is easily perceived, is a picture-gallery containing a host of copies and very few originals.
    • Variant translation: History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.
    • Old Regime (1856), p. 88

  • The French are ... the most brilliant and the most dangerous nation of Europe, and the one that is surest to inspire admiration, hatred, terror, or pity, but never indifference.
    • Variant translation: The French constitute the most brilliant and the most dangerous nation in Europe and the best qualified in turn to become an object of admiration, hatred, pity or terror but never indifference.
    • Old Regime (1856), p. 245

  • He who seeks freedom for anything but freedom's self is made to be a slave.
    • Variant translation: The man who asks of freedom anything other than itself is born to be a slave.
    • Old Regime (1856), p. 204

  • The regime which is destroyed by a revolution is almost always an improvement on its immediate predecessor, and experience teaches that the most critical moment for bad governments is the one which witnesses their first steps toward reform.
    • Variant translation: The most dangerous moment for a bad government is when it begins to reform.
    • Old Regime (1856), p. 214

  • The last thing abandoned by a party is its phraseology, because among political parties, as elsewhere, the vulgar make the language, and the vulgar abandon more easily the ideas that have been instilled into it than the words that it has learnt.
    • France Before The Consulate, Chapter I: "How the Republic was ready to accept a master", in Memoir, Letters, and Remains, Vol I (1862), p. 266
    • Variant translation: The last thing a political party gives up is its vocabulary. This is because, in party politics as in other matters, it is the crowd who dictates the language, and the crowd relinquishes the ideas it has been given more readily than the words it has learned.
      • As quoted in The Viking book of Aphorisms : A Personal Selection (1962) by W. H. Auden, and Louis Kronenberger, p. 306
    • Variant translation: The last thing that a party abandons is its language.

  • In a revolution, as in a novel, the most difficult part to invent is the end.
    • Recollections of Alexis de Tocqueville, p. 71

  • I have come across men of letters who have written history without taking part in public affairs, and politicians who have concerned themselves with producing events without thinking about them. I have observed that the first are always inclined to find general causes whereas the second, living in the midst of disconnected daily facts, are prone to imagine that everything is attributable to particular incidents, and that the wires they pull are the same as those that move the world. It is to be presumed that both are equally deceived.
    • Recollections of Alexis de Tocqueville, p. 80

  • For the first time in sixty years, the priests, the old aristocracy and the people met in a common sentiment—a feeling of revenge, it is true, and not of affection ; but even that is a great thing in politics, where a community of hatred is almost always the foundation of friendships.
  • Alternative translation: In politics... shared hatreds are almost always the basis of friendships.
    • Recollections of Alexis de Tocqueville, p. 96

Democracy in America, Volume I (1835)


  • God does not need to speak for himself in order for us to discover definitive signs of his will; it is enough to examine the normal course of nature and the consistent tendency of events. I know without needing to hear the voice of the Creator that the stars trace out in space the orbits which his hand has drawn.
    • Introduction

  • If a [democratic] society displays less brilliance than an aristocracy, there will also be less wretchedness; pleasures will be less outrageous and wellbeing will be shared by all; the sciences will be on a smaller scale but ignorance will be less common; opinions will be less vigorous and habits gentler; you will notice more vices and fewer crimes.
    • Introduction

  • By the side of these religious men I discern others whose looks are turned to the earth more than to Heaven; they are the partisans of liberty, not only as the source of the noblest virtues, but more especially as the root of all solid advantages; and they sincerely desire to extend its sway, and to impart its blessings to mankind. It is natural that they should hasten to invoke the assistance of religion, for they must know that liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith; but they have seen religion in the ranks of their adversaries, and they inquire no further; some of them attack it openly, and the remainder are afraid to defend it.
    • Introduction

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

  • Step back in time; look closely at the child in the very arms of his mother; see the external world reflected for the first time in the yet unclear mirror of his understanding; study the first examples which strike his eyes; listen to the first words which arouse within him the slumbering power of thought; watch the first struggles which he has to undergo; only then will you comprehend the source of his prejudices, the habits, and the passions which are to rule his life. The entire man, so to speak, comes fully formed in the wrappings of his cradle.
    • Chapter II

  • 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.
    • Chapter II

  • I know of no country, indeed, where the love of money has taken stronger hold on the affections of men, and where the profounder contempt is expressed for the theory of the permanent equality of property.
    • Chapter III

  • There is, in fact, a manly and lawful passion for equality which excites men to wish all to be powerful and honored. This passion tends to elevate the humble to the rank of the great; but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level, and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom.
  • Often quoted as: Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.
    • Chapter III

  • "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.
    • Chapter IV

  • 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.
    • Chapter V

  • The New Englander is attached to his township because it is strong and independent; he has an interest in it because he shares in its management; he loves it because he has no reason to complain of his lot; he invests his ambition and his future in it; in the restricted sphere within his scope, he learns to rule society; he gets to know those formalities without which freedom can advance only through revolutions, and becoming imbued with their spirit, develops a taste for order, understands the harmony of powers, and in the end accumulates clear, practical ideas about the nature of his duties and the extent of his rights.
    • Chapter V

  • Useful undertakings which require sustained attention and vigorous precision in order to succeed often end up by being abandoned, for, in America, as elsewhere, the people move forward by sudden impulses and short-lived efforts.
    • Chapter V

  • In order to enjoy the inestimable benefits that the liberty of the press ensures, it is necessary to submit to the inevitable evils it creates

    • Chapter XI

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

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

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

  • In America, conscription is unknown; men are enlisted for payment. Compulsory recruitment is so alien to the ideas and so foreign to the customs of the people of the United States that I doubt whether they would ever dare to introduce it into their law.
    • Chapter XIII

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

  • In the United States, except for slaves, servants and the destitute fed by townships, everyone has the vote and this is an indirect contributor to law-making. Anyone wishing to attack the law is thus reduced to adopting one of two obvious courses: they must either change the nation's opinion or trample its wishes under foot.
    • Chapter XIV

  • 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.
    • Chapter XIV

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

  • 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.
    • Chapter XV

  • Laws are always unstable unless they are founded on the manners of a nation; and manners are the only durable and resisting power in a people.
    • Chapter XVI

  • In cities men cannot be prevented from concerting together, and from awakening a mutual excitement which prompts sudden and passionate resolutions. Cities may be looked upon as large assemblies, of which all the inhabitants are members; their populace exercises a prodigious influence upon the magistrates, and frequently executes its own wishes without their intervention.
    • Variant translation: In towns it is impossible to prevent men from assembling, getting excited together and forming sudden passionate resolves. Towns are like great meeting houses with all the inhabitants as members. In them the people wield immense influence over their magistrates and often carry their desires into execution without intermediaries.
    • Chapter XVII

  • If it be of the highest importance to man, as an individual, that his religion should be true, the case of society is not the same. Society has no future life to hope for or to fear; and provided the citizens profess a religion, the peculiar tenets of that religion are of very little importance to its interests.
    • Variant translation: 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.
    • Chapter XVII

  • The Americans combine the notions of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other; and with them this conviction does not spring from that barren traditionary faith which seems to vegetate in the soul rather than to live.
    • Chapter XVII

  • Despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot. How is it possible that society should escape destruction if the moral tie is not strengthened in proportion as the political tie is relaxed? And what can be done with a people who are their own masters if they are not submissive to the Deity?
    • Chapter XVII

  • They all attributed the peaceful dominion of religion in their country mainly to the separation of church and state. I do not hesitate to affirm that during my stay in America I did not meet a single individual, of the clergy or the laity, who was not of the same opinion on this point.
    • Chapter XVII

  • 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.
    • Chapter XVII

  • Among these widely differing families of men, the first that attracts attention, the superior in intelligence, in power, and in enjoyment, is the white, or European, the MAN pre-eminently so called, below him appear the Negro and the Indian.
    • Chapter XVIII

  • The most formidable of all the ills that threaten the future of the Union arises from the presence of a black population upon its territory; and in contemplating the cause of the present embarrassments, or the future dangers of the United States, the observer is invariably led to this as a primary fact.
    • Chapter XVIII

  • You may set the Negro free, but you cannot make him otherwise than an alien to the European. Nor is this all we scarcely acknowledge the common features of humanity in this stranger whom slavery has brought among us. His physiognomy is to our eyes hideous, his understanding weak, his tastes low; and we are almost inclined to look upon him as a being intermediate between man and the brutes.
    • Chapter XVIII

  • No natural boundary seems to be set to the efforts of man; and what is not yet done is only what he has not yet attempted to do.
  • Variant: What is not yet done is only what we have not yet attempted to do.
    • Chapter XVIII

  • 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.
    • Chapter XVIII

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

  • There are at the present time two great nations in the world—allude to the Russians and the Americans— All other nations seem to have nearly reached their national limits, and have only to maintain their power; these alone are proceeding—along a path to which no limit can be perceived.
    • Chapter XVIII

  • In the United States a man builds a house to spend his latter years in it and he sells it before the roof is on. He plants a garden and lets it just as the trees are coming into bearing. He brings a field into tillage and leaves other men to gather the crops. He embraces a profession and gives it up. He settles in a place which he soon afterward leaves to carry his changeable longings elsewhere. If his private affairs leave him any leisure he instantly plunges into the vortex of politics and if at the end of a year of unremitting labour he finds he has a few days' vacation, his eager curiosity whirls him over the vast extent of the United States, and he will travel fifteen hundred miles in a few days to shake off his happiness.
    • Chapter XXIX

Democracy in America, Volume II (1840)

  • 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.
    • Book One, Chapter II

  • General ideas are no proof of the strength, but rather of the insufficiency of the human intellect.
    • Book One, Chapter III

  • Muhammad brought down from heaven and put into the Koran not religious doctrines only, but political maxims, criminal and civil laws, and scientific theories. The Gospels, on the other hand, deal only with the general relations between man and God and between man and man. Beyond that, they teach nothing and do not oblige people to believe anything. That alone, among a thousand reasons, is enough to show that Islam will not be able to hold its power long in ages of enlightenment and democracy, while Christianity is destined to reign in such ages, as in all others.
    • Book One, Chapter V

  • 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.
    • Book One, Chapter V

  • 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.
    • Book One, Chapter XIII

  • They certainly are not great writers, but they speak their country's language and they make themselves heard.
    • Book One, Chapter XIII

  • 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.
    • Book One, Chapter XIII

  • 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.
    • Book One, Chapter XVI

  • There is hardly a member of Congress who can make up his mind to go home without having despatched at least one speech to his constituents; nor who will endure any interruption until he has introduced into his harangue whatever useful suggestions may be made touching the four-and-twenty States of which the Union is composed, and especially the district which he represents.
    • Book One, Chapter XXI

  • 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.
    • Book One, Chapter XXI

  • I think that democratic communities have a natural taste for freedom: left to themselves, they will seek it, cherish it, and view any privation of it with regret. But for equality, their passion is ardent, insatiable, incessant, invincible: they call for equality in freedom; and if they cannot obtain that, they still call for equality in slavery.
    • Book Two, Chapter I

  • 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.
    • Book Two, Chapter II

  • Americans of all ages, all stations of life, and all types of disposition are forever forming associations... In democratic countries knowledge of how to combine is the mother of all other forms of knowledge; on its progress depends that of all the others.
    • Book Two, Chapter V

  • I am far from denying that newspapers in democratic countries lead citizens to do very ill-considered things in common; but without newspapers there would be hardly any common action at all. So they mend many more ills than they cause.
    • Book Two, Chapter VI

  • What most astonishes me in the United States, is not so much the marvelous grandeur of some undertakings, as the innumerable multitude of small ones.
    • Book Two, Chapter XIX

  • 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.
    • Book Three, Chapter I

  • 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 often seem to let them flap.
    • Book Three, Chapter IX

  • 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.
    • Book Three, Chapter X

  • The principle of equality does not destroy the imagination, but lowers its flight to the level of the earth.
    • Book Three, Chapter XI

  • 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.
    • Book Three, Chapter XI

  • In America, more than anywhere else in the world, care has been taken constantly to trace clearly distinct spheres of action for the two sexes, and both are required to keep in step, but along paths that are never the same.
    • Book Three, Chapter XII

  • 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.
    • Book Three, Chapter XII

  • 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.
    • Book Three, Chapter XIII

  • 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.
    • Book Three, Chapter XIV

  • 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.
    • Book Three, Chapter XVIII

  • Commerce is naturally adverse to all the violent passions; it loves to temporize, takes delight in compromise, and studiously avoids irritation. It is patient, insinuating, flexible, and never has recourse to extreme measures until obliged by the most absolute necessity. Commerce renders men independent of each other, gives them a lofty notion of their personal importance, leads them to seek to conduct their own affairs, and teaches how to conduct them well; it therefore prepares men for freedom, but preserves them from revolutions.
    • Variant translation: 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.
    • Book Three, Chapter XXI

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

  • 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.
    • Book Three, Chapter XXI

  • If there ever are great revolutions there, they will be caused by the presence of the blacks upon American soil. That is to say, it will not be the equality of social conditions but rather their inequality which may give rise thereto.
    • Book Three, Chapter XXI

  • 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.
    • Book Three, Chapter XXI

  • When an opinion has taken root in a democracy and established itself in the minds of the majority, it 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.
    • Book Three, Chapter XXI

  • 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.
    • Book Three, Chapter XXI

  • There are two things which a democratic people will always find very difficult—to begin a war and to end it.
    • Book Three, Chapter XXII

  • No protracted war can fail to endanger the freedom of a democratic country.
    • Book Three, Chapter XXII

  • 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.
    • Book Three, Chapter XXII

  • Every central government worships uniformity: uniformity relieves it from inquiry into an infinity of details.
    • Book Four, Chapter III

  • They (the emperors) frequently abused their power arbitrarily to deprive their subjects of property or of life: their tyranny was extremely onerous to the few, but it did not reach the greater number; .. But it would seem that if despotism were to be established amongst the democratic nations of our days it might assume a different character; it would be more extensive and more mild, it would degrade men without tormenting them.
    • Book Four, Chapter VI

  • After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the government then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence: it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.
    • Book Four, Chapter VI

  • I should have loved freedom, I believe, at all times, but in the time in which we live I am ready to worship it.
    • Book Four, Chapter VII

  • As the past has ceased to throw its light upon the future, the mind of man wanders in obscurity.
    • Variant translation: When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness.
    • Book Four, Chapter VIII

Misattributed

  • In the end, the state of the Union comes down to the character of the people. I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and her ample rivers, and it was not there. In the fertile fields and boundless prairies, and it was not there. In her rich mines and her vast world commerce, and it was not there. Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits, aflame with righteousness, did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.
    • This has often been attributed to de Tocqueville's Democracy in America, but erroneously, according to "The Tocqueville Fraud" in The Weekly Standard (13 November 1995). This quote dates back to at least 1922 (Herald and Presbyter, September 6, 1922, p. 8)
    • There's an earlier variant, without the memorable ending, that dates back to at least 1886:
      I went at your bidding, and passed along their thoroughfares of trade. I ascended their mountains and went down their valleys. I visited their manufactories, their commercial markets, and emporiums of trade. I entered their judicial courts and legislative halls. But I sought everywhere in vain for the secret of their success, until I entered the church. It was there, as I listened to the soul-equalizing and soul-elevating principles of the Gospel of Christ, as they fell from Sabbath to Sabbath upon the masses of the people, that I learned why America was great and free, and why France was a slave.
      • Empty Pews & Selections from Other Sermons on Timely Topics, Madison Clinton Peters; Zeising, 1886, p. 35

  • It's not an endlessly expanding list of rights — the 'right' to education, the 'right' to health care, the 'right' to food and housing. That's not freedom, that's dependency. Those aren't rights, those are the rations of slavery — hay and a barn for human cattle.
    • P. J. O'Rourke, in Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut‎ (1996), p. 227

  • The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.
    • This is a variant expression of a sentiment which is often attributed to Tocqueville or Alexander Fraser Tytler, but the earliest known occurrence is as an unsourced attribution to Tytler in "This is the Hard Core of Freedom" by Elmer T. Peterson in The Daily Oklahoman (9 December 1951): "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy."
    • Variant: The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money.
 
Quoternity
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