Posted on 04/18/2002 8:01:57 PM PDT by PsyOp
The latest installment of quotations for freepers from Alexis De Tocqueville's Democracy in America,. Quotes compiled and organized by yours truly. Regards and enjoy - PsyOp.
The sentiment of ambition is universal, but the scope of ambition is seldom vast. - De Tocqueville.
In the United States, as soon as a man has acquired some education and pecuniary resources, he either endeavors to get rich by commerce or industry, or he buys land in the bush and turns pioneer. All that he asks of the state is, not to be disturbed in his toil, and to be secure of his earnings. - De Tocqueville.
I confess that, in America, I saw more than America; I saw there the image of democracy itself, with its inclinations, its character, its prejudices, and its passions, in order to learn what we have to fear or to hope from its progress. - De Tocqueville.
America is a land of wonders, in which everything is in constant motion and every change seems an improvement. The idea of novelty is there indissolubly connected with the idea of amelioration. No natural boundary seems to be set to the efforts of man; and in his eyes what is not yet done is only what he has not yet attempted to do. - De Tocqueville.
In my opinion, the main evil of the present democratic institutions of the United States does not arise, as is often asserted in Europe, from their weakness, but from their irresistible strength. I am not so much alarmed at the excessive liberty which reigns in that country as at the inadequate securities which one finds there against tyranny. - De Tocqueville.
Such is the admirable position of the New World, that man has no other enemy than himself; and that, in order to be happy and to be free, he has only to determine that he will be so. - De Tocqueville.
I never met in America with any citizen so poor as not to cast a glance of hope and envy on the enjoyments of the rich, or whose imagination did not possess itself by anticipation of those good things which fate still obstinately withheld from him.
On the other hand, I never perceived amongst the wealthier inhabitants of the United States that proud contempt of physical gratifications which is sometimes to be met with even in the most opulent and dissolute aristocracies. Most of these wealthy persons were once poor: they have felt the sting of want. - De Tocqueville.
The Revolution of the United States was the result of mature and reflecting preference of freedom, and not of a vague or ill-defined craving for independence. - De Tocqueville.
The citizen of the United States is taught from infancy to rely upon his own exertions, in order to resist the evils and difficulties of life; he looks upon the social authority with an eye of mistrust and anxiety, and he claims its assistance only when he is unable to do without it. - De Tocqueville.
If an American were condemned to confine his activity to his own affairs, he would be robbed of one half of his activity; he would be robbed of one half of his existence; he would feel an immense void in the life which he is accustomed to lead, and his wretchedness would be unbearable. - De Tocqueville.
The temper of the Americans is vindictive, like that of all serious and reflecting nations. They hardly ever forget an offense, but it is not easy to offend them; and their resentment is as slow to kindle as it is to abate. - De Tocqueville.
The Americans have applied to the sexes the great principle of political economy which governs the manufactures of our age, by carefully dividing the duties of man from those of women, in order that the great work of society may be the better carried on. - De Tocqueville.
Aristocracy can never become a majority while it retains it’s exclusive privileges, and it cannot cede it’s privileges without ceasing to be an aristocracy. - De Tocqueville.
I do not think a single people can be cited, since human society began, that has, of its own free will and by its own exertions, created an aristocracy within its bosom. - De Tocqueville.
By nature, aristocracies are too liable to narrow the scope of human perfectibility, democracies to expand it beyond reason. - De Tocqueville.
The American republics have no standing armies to intimidate a discontented minority; but as no minority has as yet been reduced to declare open war, the necessity of an army has not been felt. - De Tocqueville.
Any army is in danger of being conquered at the outset of a campaign, after a long peace; any army which has long been engaged in warfare has strong chances of victory: this truth is peculiarly applicable to democratic armies. - De Tocqueville.
An army constitutes a small community, very closely united together, endowed with great powers of vitality, and able to supply its own wants for some time. - De Tocqueville.
The invention of fire-arms equalized the vassal and the noble on the field of battle. - De Tocqueville.
Men cannot do without dogmatical belief. - De Tocqueville.
If men were forced to demonstrate for himself all the truths of which he makes daily use, his task would never end. He would exhaust his strength in preparatory demonstrations, without ever advancing beyond them. - De Tocqueville.
Thus, when public employments afford the only outlet for ambition, the government necessarily meets with limited means and unlimited desires. It is very certain that, of all people in the world, the most difficult to restrain and to manage are a people of public office-hunters. - De Tocqueville.
In an orderly and peaceable democracy like the United States, where men cannot enrich themselves by war, by public office, or by political confiscation, the love of wealth mainly drives them into business and manufactures. - De Tocqueville. 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. - De Tocqueville.
In democratic countries, as well as elsewhere, most of the branches of productive industry are carried on at a small cost, by men little removed by their wealth or education above the level of those whom they employ. - De Tocqueville.
I know of nothing more opposite to revolutionary manners than commercial manners. Commerce is naturally adverse to all violent passions; it loves to temporize, takes delight in compromise, and studiously avoids irritation. - De Tocqueville.
There are only two ways of lowering the price of commodities. The first is to discover some better, shorter, and more ingenious method of producing them: the second is to manufacture a larger quantity of goods, nearly similar, but of less value. Amongst a democratic population, all the intellectual faculties of the workman are directed to these two objects: he strives to invent methods which may enable him not only to work better, but quicker and cheaper; or, if he cannot succeed in that, to diminish the intrinsic quality of the thing he makes, without rendering it wholly unfit for the use for which it is intended. - De Tocqueville.
It must never be forgotten that religion gave birth to Anglo-American society. In the United States, religion is therefore mingled with all the habits of the nation and all the feelings of patriotism, whence it derives a peculiar force. To this reason another of no less power may be added: in America, religion has, as it were, laid down its own limits. Religious institutions have remained wholly distinct from political institutions, so that former laws have been easily changed whilst former belief has remained unshaken. - De Tocqueville.
For my own part, I doubt whether man can ever support at the same time complete religious independence and entire political freedom. And I am inclined to think that, if faith be wanting in him, he must be subject; and if he be free, he must believe. - De Tocqueville.
If I were asked where I place the American aristocracy, I should reply, without hesitation, that it is not among the rich, who are united by no common tie, but that it occupies the judicial bench and the bar. - De Tocqueville.
The division of property has lessened the distance which separated the rich from the poor; but it would seem that the nearer they draw to each other, the greater is their mutual hatred and the more vehement the envy and the dread with which they resist each other’s claims to power; the idea of right does not exist for either party, and force affords to both the only argument for the present and the only guarantee for the future. - De Tocqueville.
When equality of conditions succeeds a protracted conflict between the different classes of which the elder society was composed, envy, hatred, and uncharitableness, pride and exaggerated self-confidence, seize upon the human heart, and plant their sway in it for a time. - De Tocqueville.
I am aware that, amongst a great democratic people, there will always be some members of the community in great poverty, and others in great opulence; but the poor, instead of forming the immense majority of the nation, as is always the case in aristocratic communities, are comparatively few in number, and the laws do not bind them together by the ties of irremediable and hereditary penury. - De Tocqueville.
The passion for physical comforts is essentially a passion of the middle classes: with those classes it grows and spreads, with them it preponderates. From them it mounts into the higher orders of society, and descends into the mass of the people. - De Tocqueville.
Between these two extremes of democratic communities stand an innumerable multitude of men almost alike, who, without being exactly either rich or poor, are possessed of sufficient property to desire the maintenance of order, yet not enough to execute envy. Such men are the natural enemies of violent commotions; their stillness keeps all beneath them and above them still, and secures the balance of the fabric of society. - De Tocqueville.
In America the authority exercised by the legislatures is supreme; nothing prevents them from accomplishing their wishes with celerity and with irresistible power. - De Tocqueville.
Of all political institutions, the legislature is the one that is most easily swayed by the will of the majority. The Americans determined that the members of the legislature should be elected by the people directly, and for a very brief term, in order to subject them, not only to the general convictions, but even to the daily passions, of their constituents. - De Tocqueville.
The moral authority of the majority is partly based upon the notion that there is more intelligence and wisdom in a number of men united than in a single individual and that the number of legislators is more important than their quality. The theory of equality is thus applied to the intellects of men. - De Tocqueville.
In countries where associations are free, secret societies are unknown. In America, there are factions, but no conspiracies. - De Tocqueville.
In the United States, the constitution governs the legislator as much as the private citizen: as it is the first of the laws, it cannot be modified, by a law; and it is therefore just that the tribunals should obey the constitution in preference to any law. - De Tocqueville.
The political theories of America are more simple and more rational. An American Constitution is not supposed to be immutable, as in France; nor is it susceptible of modification by the ordinary powers of society, as in England. - De Tocqueville.
A corrupt or incapable magistrate will not concert his measures with another magistrate, simply because the latter is as corrupt and incapable as himself; and these two men will never unite their endeavors to promote the corruption and inaptitude of their remote posterity. The ambition and the maneuvers of the one will serve, on the contrary, to unmask the other. The vices of a magistrate, in democratic states, are usually wholly personal. - De Tocqueville.
The judicial organization of the United States is the institution which a stranger has the greatest difficulty in understanding. - De Tocqueville.
The first characteristic of judicial power in all nations is the duty of arbitration.... The second characteristic of judicial power is, that it pronounces on special cases, and not upon general principles.... The third characteristic of the judicial power is, that it can only act when it is called upon, or when, in legal phrase, it has taken cognizance of an affair. - De Tocqueville.
In the Middle Ages, when it was very difficult to reach offenders, the judges inflicted frightful punishments on the few who were arrested; but this did not diminish the number of crimes. It has since been discovered that, when justice is more certain and more mild, it is more efficacious. The English and the Americans hold that tyranny and oppression are to be treated like any other crime, by lessening the penalty and facilitating conviction.... - De Tocqueville.
In Europe, a criminal is an unhappy man who is struggling for his life against the agents of power, whilst the people are merely a spectator of the conflict: in America, he is looked upon as an enemy of the human race, and the whole of mankind is against him. - De Tocqueville.
It should never be forgotten by leaders of democratic nations that nothing except the love and habit of freedom can maintain an advantageous contest with the love and habit of physical well-being. I can conceive of nothing better prepared for subjection in case of defeat than a democratic people without free institutions. - De Tocqueville.
The advantage of democracy is not as has been sometimes asserted, that it protects the interests of all, but simply that it protects those of the majority. - De Tocqueville.
The very essence of democratic government consists in the absolute sovereignty of the majority; for there is nothing in democratic states that is capable of resisting it. - De Tocqueville.
Democracy does not give the people the most skillful government, but it produces what the ablest governments are frequently unable to create; namely, an all-pervading and restless activity, a superabundant force, and an energy which is inseparable from it, and which may, however unfavorable circumstances may be, produces wonders. These are the true advantages of democracy. - De Tocqueville.
Democracy does not attach men strongly to each other; but it places their habitual intercourse upon an easier footing. - De Tocqueville.
Democracy loosens social ties, but tightens natural ones; it brings kindred more closely together, whilst it throws citizens more apart. - De Tocqueville.
Despotism taken by itself, can maintain nothing durable. - De Tocqueville.
It is easier to establish an absolute and despotic government amongst a people in which the conditions of society are equal, than amongst any other. - De Tocqueville.
The foremost, or indeed the sole condition, which is required in order to succeed in centralizing the supreme power in a democratic community, is to love equality, or to get men to believe you love it. Thus, the science of despotism, which was once so complex, is simplified, and reduced, as it were, to a single principle. - De Tocqueville.
In America, every one finds facilities unknown elsewhere for making or increasing his fortune. The spirit of gain is always on the stretch, and the human mind, constantly diverted from the pleasures of imagination and the labors of the intellect, is there swayed by no impulse but the pursuit of wealth. - De Tocqueville.
From the time when the exercise of the intellect became a source of strength and wealth, we see that every addition to science, every fresh truth, and every new idea became a germ of power placed within the reach of the people. - De Tocqueville.
As soon as the multitude begin to take an interest in the labors of the mind, it finds out that to excel in some of them is a powerful means of acquiring fame, power, or wealth. - De Tocqueville.
A desire to utilize knowledge is one thing; the pure desire to know is another. - De Tocqueville.
It is in vain to summon a people, who have been rendered so dependent on the central power, to choose from time to time the representatives of that power; this rare and brief exercise of their free choice, however important it may be, will not prevent them from gradually losing the faculties of thinking, feeling, and acting for themselves, and thus gradually falling below the level of humanity. - De Tocqueville.
Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom. - De Tocqueville.
There are no surer guaranties of equality among men than poverty and misfortune. - De Tocqueville.
It is impossible to believe that equality will not eventually find its way into the political world, as it does everywhere else. To conceive of men remaining forever unequal upon a single point, yet equal on all others, is impossible; they must come in the end to be equal upon all. - De Tocqueville.
There is, in fact, a manly and lawful passion for equality which incites 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. - De Tocqueville.
As the conditions of men become equal amongst a people, individuals seem of less, and society of greater importance; or rather, every citizen, being assimilated to all the rest, is lost in the crowd, and nothing stands conspicuous but the great and imposing image of the people at large. - De Tocqueville.
The evils which extreme equality may produce are slowly disclosed; they creep gradually into the social frame; they are seen only at intervals; and at the moment at which they become most violent, habit already causes them to be no longer felt.... The advantages of equality are immediate, and they may always be traced to their source. - De Tocqueville.
The principle of equality begets two tendencies: the one leads men straight to independence, and may suddenly drive them into anarchy; the other conducts them by a longer, more secret, but more certain road, to servitude. Nations readily discern the former tendency, and are prepared to resist it; they are led away by the latter without perceiving its drift.- De Tocqueville.
Men cannot become absolutely equal unless they are entirely free; and consequently equality, pushed to its furthest extent, may be confounded with freedom, yet there is good reason for distinguishing the one from the other. The taste which men have for liberty, and that which they feel for equality, are, in fact, two different things; and I am not afraid to add, that, amongst democratic nations, they are two unequal things. - De Tocqueville.
The remark I apply to politics extends to everything: equality everywhere produces the same effects; where the laws of a country do not regulate and retard the advancement of men by positive enactment, competition attains the same end. - De Tocqueville.
As natural inequality is very great, fortunes become unequal as soon as everyman exerts all his faculties to get rich.... Natural inequality will soon make way for itself, and wealth will spontaneously pass into the hands of the most capable. - De Tocqueville.
It is important not to confound stability with force, or the greatness of a thing with it’s duration. In democratic republics, the power which directs society is not stable; for it often changes hands, and assumes a new direction. But, whichever way it turns, its force is almost irresistible. - De Tocqueville.
Nations are like men: they love that which flatters their passions even more than that which served their interests. - Alexis de Tocqueville.
Foreign policy demands scarcely any of those qualities which are peculiar to a democracy; on the contrary it calls for the perfect use of almost all those qualities in which a democracy is deficient. Democracy is favorable to the increase of the internal resources of the state, it diffuses wealth and comfort, and fortifies the respect for law in all classes of society, but it can only with great difficulty regulate the details of an important undertaking, persevere in a fixed design, and work out its execution in spite of serious obstacles. It cannot combine its measures with secrecy or await their consequences with patience. These are qualities which are more characteristic of an individual or and aristocracy. - Alexis de Tocqueville.
How can a populace, unaccustomed to freedom in small concerns, learn to use it temperately in great affairs? - De Tocqueville.
The evils which freedom sometimes brings with it are immediate; they are apparent to all, and all are more or less affected by them.... The advantages which freedom brings are apparent only by the lapse of time; and it is always easy to mistake the cause in which they originate. - De Tocqueville.
Thus it is by the enjoyment of dangerous freedom that the Americans learn the art of rendering the dangers of freedom less formidable. - De Tocqueville.
I should be inclined to think freedom less necessary in great things than in little ones, if it were possible to be secure of the one without possessing the other. Subjection in minor affairs breaks out everyday, and is felt by the whole community indiscriminately. It does not drive men to resistance, but it crosses them at every turn, till they are led to surrender the exercise of their own will. Thus their spirit is gradually broken and their character enervated.... - De Tocqueville.
Servitude cannot be complete if the press is free: the press is the chief democratic instrument of freedom. - De Tocqueville.
I shall not deny that, in democracies, newspapers frequently lead the citizens to launch together into very ill-digested schemes; but if there were no newspapers there would be no common activity. The evil which they produce is therefor much less than that which they cure. - De Tocqueville.
The extraordinary subdivision of administrative power has much more to do with the enormous number of American newspapers, than the great political freedom of the country and the absolute freedom of the press. - De Tocqueville.
The influence of the liberty of the press does not affect political opinions alone, but extends to all the opinions of men, and modifies customs as well as laws. - De Tocqueville.
The more I consider the independence of the press in its principal consequences, the more am I convinced that, in the modern world, it is the chief, and, so to speak, the constitutive element of liberty. A nation which is determined to remain free is therefore right in demanding, at any price, the exercise of this independence. - De Tocqueville.
A government can no more be competent to keep alive and renew the circulation of opinions and feelings amongst a great people, than to manage all the speculations of productive industry. - De Tocqueville.
The words of one strong-minded man addressed to the passions of a listening, have more power than the vociferations of a thousand orators; and if he be allowed to speak freely in any one public place, the consequence is the same as if free speaking was allowed in every village. - De Tocqueville.
Our contemporaries are but too prone to doubt of human free-will, because each of them feels himself confined on every side by his own weakness; but they are still willing to acknowledge the strength and independence of men united in society. Let not this principle be lost sight of; for the great object in our time is to raise the faculties of men, not to complete their prostration. - De Tocqueville.
In a political democracy the most peaceful of all people are the generals. - De Tocqueville.
A centralized administration is fit only to enervate the nations in which it exists, by incessantly diminishing their local spirit. Although such an administration can bring together at a given moment, on a given point, all the resources of a people, it injures the renewal of those resources. It may insure a victory in the hour of strife, but it gradually ralaxes the sinews of strength. It may help admirably the transient greatness of a man, but not the durable prosperity of a nation. - De Tocqueville.
[The] extreme centralization of government ultimately enervates society, and thus, after a length of time, weakens the government itself; but I do not deny that a centralized social power may be able to execute great undertakings with facility in a given time and on a particular point. This is more especially true of war, in which success depends much more on the means of transferring all the resources of a nations to one single point, than on the extent of those resources. - De Tocqueville.
Every central government worships uniformity: uniformity relieves it from inquiry into an infinity of details, which must be attended to if rules have to be adapted to different men, instead of indiscriminately subjecting all men to the same rule. - De Tocqueville.
If... a legislative power could be so constituted as to represent the majority without necessarily being the slave of its passions, an executive so as to retain a proper share of authority, and a judiciary so as to remain independent of the other two powers, a government would be formed which would still be democratic while incurring scarcely any risk of tyranny. - De Tocqueville.
The most powerful, and perhaps the only, means which we still possess of interesting men in the welfare of their country, is to make them partakers in the government. - De Tocqueville.
The government of democracy is favorable to the political power of lawyers; for when the wealthy, the noble, and, the prince are excluded from the government, the lawyers take possession of it, in their own right, as it were, since they are the only men of information and sagacity, beyond the sphere of the people, who can be the object of popular choice. - De Tocqueville.
It profits me but little, after all, that a vigilant authority always protects the tranquility of my pleasures, and constantly averts all dangers from my path, without my care or concern, if this same authority is the absolute master of my liberty and my life, and if it so monopolizes movement and life, that when it languishes everything languishes around it, that when it sleeps everything must sleep, and that when it dies the state itself must perish. - De Tocqueville.
However enlightened and skillful a central power may be, it cannot of itself embrace all the details of the life of a great nation. Such vigilance exceeds the powers of man. And when it attempts unaided to create and set in motion so many complicated springs, it must submit to a very imperfect result, or exhaust itself in bootless efforts. - De Tocqueville.
No sooner does a government attempt to go beyond its political sphere,... than it exercises, even unintentionally, an insupportable tyranny; for a government can only dictate strict rules, the opinions which it favors are rigidly enforced, and it is never easy to discriminate between its advice and its commands. - De Tocqueville.
Habits are formed in the heart of a free country which may some day prove fatal to its liberties. - De Tocqueville.
One of the most ordinary weakness of the human intellect is to seek reconcile contrary principles, and to purchase peace at the expense of logic. - De Tocqueville.
Aristocratic nations are naturally to apt too narrow the scope of human perfectibility; democratic nations, to expand it beyond reason. - De Tocqueville.
It can hardly be believed how many facts naturally flow from the philosophical theory of the indefinite perfectibility of man, or how strong an influence it exercises even on those who, living entirely for the purposes of action and not of thought, seem to conform their actions to it, without knowing anything about it. - De Tocqueville.
When men are all alike they are all weak, and the supreme power of the state is naturally much stronger. - De Tocqueville.
Individualism is a mature and calm feeling, which disposes each member of the community to sever himself from the mass of his fellows, and to draw apart with his family and his friends; so that, after he has thus formed a little circle of his own, he willingly leaves society at large to itself. - De Tocqueville.
When a nation is divided into several great irreconcilable interests, the privilege of the majority is often overlooked, because it is intolerable to comply with its demands. - De Tocqueville.
When a nation is divided into several great irreconcilable interests, the privilege of the majority is often overlooked, because it is intolerable to comply with its demands. - De Tocqueville.
When a judge in a given case attacks a law relating to that case, he extends the circle of his customary duties, without, however stepping beyond it, since he is in some measure obliged to decide upon the law in order to decide the case. But if he pronounces upon a law without proceeding from a case, he clearly steps beyond his sphere and invades that of the legislative authority. - De Tocqueville.
It is part of the essence of judicial power to attend to private interests, and to fix itself with predilection on minute subjects submitted to its observation: another essential quality of judicial power is never to volunteer its assistance to the oppressed, but always to be at the disposal of the humblest of those who solicit it. - De Tocqueville.
In proportion as the principle of the division of labor is more extensively applied, the workman becomes more weak, more narrow-minded, and more dependent. - De Tocqueville.
It would seem as if the rulers of our time sought only to to use men in order to make things great; I wish that they would try a little more to make great men; that they would set less value on the work, and more upon the workman; that they would never forget that a nation cannot long remain strong when every man belonging to it is individually weak; and that no form or combination of social polity has yet been devised to make an energetic people out of a community of pusillanimous and enfeebled citizens. - De Tocqueville.
Next to its cultural habits, the thing which a nation is least apt to change is its civil legislation. - De Tocqueville.
The deference of the Americans to the laws has been justly applauded; but it must be added that in America legislation is made by the people. Consequently, in the United States the law favors those classes that elsewhere are the most interested in evading it. - De Tocqueville.
I am of the opinion that absolute excellence is rarely to be found in any system of laws. - De Tocqueville.
The mutability of the laws is an evil inherent in a democratic government. - De Tocqueville.
America is, at present day, the country beyond all others where laws last the shortest time. - De Tocqueville.
When I refuse to obey an unjust law, I do not contest the right of the majority to command, but I simply appeal from the sovereignty of the people to the sovereignty of mankind. - De Tocqueville.
The will of the majority is the most general of laws, and it establishes certain habits to which every one must then conform. - De Tocqueville.
Democratic laws generally tend to promote the welfare of the greatest possible number; for they emanate from the majority of the citizens, who are subject to error, but who cannot have an interest opposed to their own advantage. - De Tocqueville.
It is not always feasible to consult the whole people either directly or indirectly, in the formation of the law; but it cannot be denied that, when this is possible, the authority of the law is much augmented. - De Tocqueville.
Some of the tastes and the habits of the aristocracy may consequently be discovered in the characters of lawyers. They participate in the same instinctive love of order and formalities; and they entertain the same repugnance to the actions of the multitude, and the same secret contempt of the government of the people. - De Tocqueville.
Lawyers are attached to public order beyond every other consideration, and the best security of public order is authority. It must not be forgotten, also, that, if they prize freedom much, they generally value legality still more: they are less afraid of tyranny than arbitrary power. - De Tocqueville.
The world is not led by long or learned demonstrations: a rapid glance at particular incidents, the daily study of the fleeting passions of the multitude, the accidents of the moment and the art of turning them to account, decide all its affairs. - De Tocqueville.
A brilliant achievement may win for you the favor of a people at one stroke; but to earn the love and respect of the population which surrounds you, a long succession of little services rendered and of obscure good deeds--a constant habit of kindness, and an established reputation for disinterestedness--will be required. - De Tocqueville.
Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of government. The history of liberty is the history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it. - De Tocqueville.
There is nothing more arduous than the apprenticeship of liberty. It is not so with despotism: despotism often promises to make amends for a thousand previous ills; it supports the right, it protects the oppressed, and it maintains public order. The nation is lulled by the temporary prosperity which it produces, until it is roused to a sense of its misery. Liberty, on the contrary, is generally established with difficulty in the midst of storms; it is perfected by civil discord; and its benefits cannot be appreciated until it is already old. - De Tocqueville.
Democratic liberty is far from accomplishing all its projects with the skill of an adroit despotism. It frequently abandons them before they have borne their fruits, or risks them when the consequences may be dangerous; but in the end, it produces more than any absolute government; if it does fewer things well, it does a greater number of things. - De Tocqueville.
Those who dread the license of the mob, and those who fear absolute power, ought alike to desire the gradual development of provincial liberties. - De Tocqueville.
Liberty regards religion as its companion in all its battles and its triumphs,--as the cradle of its infancy, and the divine source of its claims. It considers religion as the safeguard of morality, and morality as the best security of law, and the surest pledge of the duration of freedom.... - De Tocqueville.
Men cannot enjoy political liberty unpurchased by some sacrifices, and they never obtain it without great exertions. - De Tocqueville.
Political liberty is more easily lost; to neglect to hold it fast, is to allow it to escape. - De Tocqueville.
Liberty is generally established with difficulty in the midst of storms; it is perfected by civil discord; and its benefits cannot be appreciated until it is already old. - Alexis de Tocqueville.
The moral authority of the majority is partly based upon the notion, that there is more intelligence and wisdom in a number of men united than in a single individual, and that the number of the legislators is more important than their quality. - De Tocqueville.
A majority taken collectively is only an individual, whose opinions, and frequently whose interests, are opposed to those of another individual, who is styled a minority. If it be admitted that a man possessing absolute power may misuse that power by wronging his adversaries, why should not a majority be liable to the same reproach? - De Tocqueville.
Like all other power, and perhaps more than any other, the authority of the majority requires the sanction of time in order to appear legitimate. - De Tocqueville.
In the United States... all parties are willing to recognize the rights of the majority, because they all hope at some time to be able to exercise them to their own advantage. - De Tocqueville.
The moral power of the majority is immense, and the physical resources which it has at its command are out of all proportion to the physical resources which may be combined against it. Therefore, the party which occupies the seat of the majority, which speaks in its name and wields its power, triumphs instantaneously and irresistibly over all private resistance; it does not even give such opposition time exist, but nips it in the bud. - De Tocqueville.
The French under the old monarchy held it for a maxim that the king could do no wrong; and if he did do wrong, the blame was imputed to his advisors. This notion made obedience very easy; it enabled the subjects to complain of the law without ceasing to love and honor the lawgiver. The Americans entertain the same opinion with respect to the majority. - De Tocqueville.
The journalists of the United States are generally in a very humble position, with a scanty education and a vulgar turn of mind. - De Tocqueville.
Society is endangered, not by the great profligacy of a few, but by the laxity of morals amongst all. - De Tocqueville.
No free community ever existed without morals and... morals are the work of women. Consequently, whatever affects the condition of women, their habits and their opinions, has great political importance. - De Tocqueville.
Although the travellers who have visited North America differ on many points, they all agree in remarking that morals are far more strict there than elsewhere. It is evident that, on this point, the Americans are very superior to their progenitors, the English. A superficial glance at the two nations will establish the fact. - De Tocqueville.
I am aware that many of my contemporaries maintain that nations are never their own masters here below, and that they necessarily obey some insurmountable and unintelligent power, arising from anterior events, from their race, or from the soil and climate of their country. Such principles are false and cowardly; such principles can never produce aught but feeble men and pusillanimous nations. - De Tocqueville. There are at the present time two great nations in the world, which started from different points, but seem to tend toward the same end. I allude to the Russians and the Americans.... Their starting point is different and their courses are not the same; yet each of them seems marked out by the will of heaven to sway the destinies of half the globe. - De Tocqueville.
Nations do not grow old as men do, and every fresh generation is a new people ready for the care of the legislator. - De Tocqueville.
Political strength... becomes a condition of national prosperity. It profits a state but little to be affluent and free, if it is perpetually exposed to be pillaged or subjugated; its manufactures and commerce are of small advantage, if another nation has the empire of the seas and gives the law in all markets of the globe. Small nations are often miserable, not because they are small, but because they are weak; and great empires prosper, less because they are great, than because they are strong. Physical strength is therefore one of the first conditions of the happiness, and even of the existence, of nations. - De Tocqueville.
I know not a more deplorable condition than that of a people unable to defend itself or to provide for its own wants. - Alexis de Tocqueville.
When men living in a democratic state of society are enlightened, they readily discover that they are not confined and fixed by any limits which constrain them to take up with their present fortune. They all, therefore, conceive the idea of increasing it,--if they are free, they attempt it; but all do not succeed in the same manner. - De Tocqueville.
When the sovereign is elective, or narrowly watched by a legislature which is really elective and independent, the oppression which he exercises over individuals is sometimes greater, but it is always less degrading; because every man, when he is oppressed and disarmed, may still imagine that, whilst he yields obedience, it is to himself he yields it, and that it is to one of his own inclinations that all the rest give way. - De Tocqueville.
In the United States, it is believed, and with truth, that patriotism is a kind of devotion which is strengthened by ritual observance. - De Tocqueville.
Patriotism is not durable in a conquered nation. - De Tocqueville.
Nothing is more embarrassing, in the ordinary intercourse of life, than this irritable patriotism of the Americans. - De Tocqueville.
There is one sort of patriotic attachment, which principally arises from that, instinctive, disinterested, and undefinable feeling which connects the affections of man with his birth place. - De Tocqueville.
All free nations are vainglorious, but national pride is not displayed by all in the same manner. - De Tocqueville.
In times of peace, the well-being of a small nations is undoubtedly more general and complete; but they are apt to suffer more acutely from the calamities of war than great empires. If none but small nations existed, I do not doubt that mankind would be more happy and more free; but the existence of great nations is unavoidable. It profits a state but little to be affluent and free it it is perpetually exposed to be pillaged or subjected. - De Tocqueville.
There is an amazing strength in the expression of the will of a whole people; and when it declares itself, even the imagination of those who wold wish to contest it is overawed. - De Tocqueville.
If there be a country in the world where the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people can be fairly appreciated, where it can be studied in its application to the affairs of society, and where its dangers and its advantages may be judged, that country is assuredly America. - De Tocqueville.
Our contemporaries are constantly excited by two conflicting passions; they want to be led, and they wish to remain free. - De Tocqueville.
To manage those minor affairs in which good sense is all that is wanted,--the people are held to be unequal to the task; but when the government of the country is at stake, the people are invested with immense powers; they are alternately made the playthings of their rulers, and their masters,--more than kings, and less than men. - De Tocqueville.
In the absence of great parties, the United States swarm with lesser controversies; and public opinion is divided into a thousand minute shades of differences upon questions of detail. - De Tocqueville.
The two chief weapons which parties use in order to obtain success are the newspapers and public associations. - De Tocqueville.
Parties are a necessary evil in free governments; but they have not at all times the same character and the same propensities. - De Tocqueville.
It sometimes happens, in a people amongst whom various opinions prevail, that the balance of parties is lost, and one of them obtains an irresistible preponderance, overpowers all obstacles, annihilates its opponents, and appropriates all the resources of society to its own use. The vanquished despair of success, hide their heads, and are silent. - De Tocqueville.
All the skill of the actors in the political world lies in the art of creating parties. A political aspirant in the United States begins by discerning his own interest, and discovering those other interests which may be collected around and amalgamated with it. He then contrives to find out some doctrine or principle which may suit the purposes of this new association, and which he adopts in order to bring forward his party and secure its popularity: just as the imprimatur of the king was in former days printed upon the title-page of a volume, and was thus incorporated with a book to which it in no wise belonged. This being done, the new party is ushered into the political world. - De Tocqueville.
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. - De Tocqueville.
Political parties are constantly deceived because they always only think of the pleasure they themselves derive from the speech of their great orator, and never of the dangerous excitement he arouses in their opponents. - De Tocqueville.
Parties never know each other: they approach, touch, seize, but never see each other. - De Tocqueville.
One constantly sees a political party exaggerating its feelings in order to embarrass its opponents, and the latter, in order to avoid the trap, pretending to sentiments which they do not feel. - De Tocqueville.
This Republic will last until it's politicians learn that their own people can be bribed with their own money. - De Tocqueville.
As most public men are, or have been, legal practitioners, they introduce the customs technicalities of their profession into the management of public affairs. - De Tocqueville.
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. - De Tocqueville.
In aristocratic governments, public men may frequently do harm without intending it; and in democratic states, they bring about good results which they never thought of. - De Tocqueville.
The men who are intrusted with the direction of public affairs in the United States are frequently inferior, both in capacity and morality, to those whom an aristocracy would raise to power. But their interest is identified and confounded with that of the majority of their fellow citizens. They may frequently be faithless, and frequently mistaken; but they will never systematically adopt a line of conduct hostile to the majority; and they cannot give a dangerous or exclusive tendency to the government. - De Tocqueville.
In great republics, political passions become irresistible, not only because they aim at gigantic objects, but because they are felt and shared by millions of men at the same time. - De Tocqueville.
In politics a community of hatred is almost always the foundation of friendships. - De Tocqueville.
The political activity which pervades the United States must be seen in order to be understood. No sooner do you set foot upon American ground, than you are stunned by a kind of tumult; a confused clamor is heard on every side; and a thousand simultaneous voices demand the satisfaction of their social wants. - De Tocqueville. In America, political life is active, varied, even agitated, but is rarely affected by those deep passions which are excited only when material interests are impaired: and in the United States, these interests are prosperous. - De Tocqueville.
The people reign in the American political world as the Deity does in the Universe. They are the cause and the aim of all things; everything comes from them, and everything is absorbed in them. - De Tocqueville.
The affections of men generally turn towards power. - De Tocqueville.
There is no power among men except in the free union of their will; and patriotism or religion are the only two motives in the world which can long urge all the people towards the same ends. - De Tocqueville.
If it be admitted that a man possessing absolute power may misuse that power by wronging his adversaries why should not a majority be liable to the same reproach? - De Tocqueville.
Unlimited power is in itself a bad and dangerous thing. Human beings are not competent to exercise it with discretion. God alone can be omnipotent, because his wisdom and his justice are always equal to his power. There is no power on earth so worthy of honor in itself or clothed with rights so sacred that I would admit its uncontrolled and all-predominant authority. When I see that the right and the means of absolute command are conferred on any power whatever, be it called a people or a king, an aristocracy or a democracy, a monarchy or a republic, I say there is the germ of tyranny. - De Tocqueville.
I am... of the opinion that social power superior to all others must always be placed somewhere; but I think that liberty is endangered when this power finds no obstacle which can retard its course and give it time to moderate its own vehemence. - De Tocqueville.
The power to do everything, which I should refuse to one of my equals, I will never grant to any number of them. - De Tocqueville.
It has been demonstrated by observation, and discovered by the sure instinct even of the pettiest despots, that the influence of a power is increased in proportion as its direction is centralized. - De Tocqueville.
Men are not corrupted by the exercise of power, or debased by the habit of obedience; but by the exercise of a power which they believe to be illegitimate, and by obedience to a rule they consider to be usurped and oppressive. - De Tocqueville.
The hatred which men bear to privilege increases in proportion as privileges become fewer and less considerable, so that democratic passion would seem to burn most fiercely just when they have the least fuel. - De Tocqueville.
Time, events, or the unaided individual action of the mind, will sometimes undermine or destroy an opinion, without any outward sign of change. It has not been openly assailed, no conspiracy has been formed to make war on it, but its followers one by one noiselessly secede; day by day a few of them abandon it, until at last it is only professed by a minority. - De Tocqueville.
When the war of [American] independence was terminated and the foundations of the new government were to be laid down, the nation was divided between two opinions,--two opinions which are as old as the world, and which are perpetually to be met with, under different forms and various names, in all free communities,--the one tending to limit, the other to extend indefinitely, the power of the people. - De Tocqueville.
The organization and the establishment of democracy in Christendom is the great political problem of our time. - De Tocqueville.
When the religion of a people is destroyed, doubt gets hold of the higher powers of the intellect, and half paralyzes all the others. Every man accustoms himself to have only confused and changing notions on the subjects most interesting to his fellow-creatures and himself. - De Tocqueville.
In America, religion is the road to knowledge, and the observance of the divine laws leads man to civil freedom. - De Tocqueville.
Religion perceives that civil liberty affords a noble exercise to the faculties of man, and that the political world is a field prepared by the Creator for the efforts of the mind. Free and powerful in its own sphere, satisfied with the place reserved for it, religion never more surely establishes its empire than when it reigns in the hearts of men unsupported by aught beside its native strength. - De Tocqueville.
When there is no longer any principle of authority in religion, any more than in politics, men are speedily frightened at the aspect of this unbounded independence. - De Tocqueville.
It is enthusiasm which flings the minds of men out of the beaten track, and effects the great revolutions of the intellect, as well as the great revolutions of the political world. - De Tocqueville.
There are no revolutions which do not shake existing belief, enervate authority, and throw doubts over commonly received ideas. The effect of all revolutions is, therefore, more or less, to surrender men to their own guidance, and to open to the mind of every man a void and almost unlimited range of speculation. - De Tocqueville.
The same effort which makes a man violently shake off a prevailing error, commonly impels him beyond the bounds of reason; that, to dare to declare war, in however just a cause, against the opinion of one's age and country, a violent and adventurous spirit is required, and that men of this character seldom arrive at happiness or virtue, whatever be the path they follow. - De Tocqueville.
As a rule, insurrections — I mean even those which succeed — begin without a leader; but they always end by securing one. - De Tocqueville.
When a violent revolution occurs amongst a highly-civilized people, it cannot fail to give a sudden impulse to their feelings and ideas. - De Tocqueville.
Almost all the revolutions which have changed the aspect of nations have been made to consolidate or to destroy social inequality. Remove the secondary causes which have produced the great convulsions of the world, and you will almost always find the principles of inequality at the bottom. Either the poor have attempted to plunder the rich, or the rich to enslave the poor. If, then, a state of society can ever be founded in which every man shall have something to keep, and little to take from others, much will have been done for the peace of the world. - De Tocqueville.
Every citizen must be put in possession of his rights, or rights must be granted to no one. - De Tocqueville.
The liberty of association has become a necessary guarantee against the tyranny of the majority. - De Tocqueville.
It was never assumed in the United States, that the citizen of a free country has a right to do whatever he pleases; on the contrary, more social obligations were there imposed upon him than anywhere else. - De Tocqueville.
It cannot be doubted that the moment at which political rights are granted to a people that had before been without them is a very critical one,--that the measure, though often necessary, is always dangerous. A child may kill before he is aware of the value of life; and he may deprive another person of his property, before he is aware that his own may be taken from him. The lower orders, when first they are invested with political rights, stand, in relation to those rights, in the same position as the child does to the whole of nature. - De Tocqueville.
Men become less attached to private rights just when it is most necessary to retain and defend what little remains of them. - De Tocqueville.
It is hardly necessary to say that, in a free country like America, all the citizens have the right of indicting public functionaries before the ordinary tribunals, and that all the judges have the power of convicting public public officers. The right granted to the courts of justice of punishing the agents of the executive government, when they violate the laws, is so natural a one that it cannot be looked upon as an extraordinary privilege. - De Tocqueville.
No citizen is so obscure that it is not very dangerous to allow him to be oppressed; no private rights are so unimportant that they can be surrendered with impunity to the caprices of a government. - De Tocqueville.
Another tendency, which is extremely natural to democratic nations and extremely dangerous, is that which leads them to despise and undervalue the rights of private persons. The attachment which men feel to a right, and the respect which they display for it, is generally proportioned to its importance, or to the length of time during which they have enjoyed it. The rights of private persons amongst democratic nations are commonly of small importance, of recent growth, and extremely precarious; the consequence is, that they are often sacrificed without regret, and almost always violated without remorse. - De Tocqueville.
A people amongst whom individuals should lose the power of achieving great things single-handed, without acquiring the means of producing them by united exertions, would soon relapse into barbarism. - De Tocqueville.
The morals and intelligence of a democratic people would be as much endangered as its business and manufactures, if the government ever wholly usurped the place of private companies. - De Tocqueville.
The leaders of modern society would be wrong to seek to lull the community by a state of too uniform and too peaceful a happiness: and that it is well to expose it from time to time to matters of difficulty and danger, in order to raise ambition, and to give it to a field of action. - De Tocqueville.
I can conceive of a society in which all men feel an equal love and respect for the laws of which they consider themselves the authors; in which the authority of the government would be respected as necessary, and not divine; and in which the loyalty of the subject to the chief magistrate would not be a passion, but a quiet and rational persuasion. - De Tocqueville.
Societies are formed to resist evils which are exclusively of a moral nature, as to diminish the vice of intemperance. - De Tocqueville.
Governments may perish, but society cannot die. - De Tocqueville.
The human mind is impelled by the small efforts of all mankind combined together, not by the strenuous activity of a few men. - De Tocqueville.
Men attend to the interests of the public, first by necessity, afterwards by choice: what was intentional becomes an instinct; and by dint of working for the good of one's fellow citizens, the habit and the taste for serving them is at length acquired. - De Tocqueville.
Amongst the laws which rule human societies, there is one which seems to be more precise and clear than all others. If men are to remain civilized, or to become so, the art of associating together must grow and improve in the same ratio in which the equality of conditions is increased. - De Tocqueville.
When men have at last learned to make a peaceful and profitable use of freedom, and have felt its blessings, — when they have conceived a manly love of order, and have freely submitted themselves to discipline, — these same men, if they follow the profession of arms, bring into it, unconsciously and almost against their will, these same habits and manners.... Teach but the citizens to be educated, orderly, firm and free, and the soldiers will be disciplined and obedient. - De Tocqueville.
The man who has long lived amidst the calm and lukewarm atmosphere of democratic manners, can at first ill adapt himself to the harder toils and sterner duties of warfare ; and if he has not absolutely lost the taste for arms, at least he has assumed a mode of life which unfits him for conquest. - De Tocqueville.
Thought is an invisible and subtle power, that mocks all the efforts of tyranny. - De Tocqueville.
Thought is not, like physical strength, dependent upon the number of its agents; nor can authors be counted like the troops which compose an army. - De Tocqueville.
Popularity may be united with hostility to the rights of the people, and the secret slave of tyranny may be the professed cover of freedom. - De Tocqueville.
What resistance can be offered to tyranny in a country where each individual is weak, and where the citizens are not united by any common interest. - De Tocqueville.
When I see that the right and the means of absolute command are conferred on any power whatever, be it called a people or a king, an aristocracy or a democracy, a monarchy or a republic. I say there is the germ of tyranny, and I seek to live elsewhere, under other laws. - De Tocqueville.
When tyranny is established in the bosom of a small state, it is more galling than elsewhere, because, acting in a narrower circle everything in that circle is affected by it. - De Tocqueville.
It is chiefly in its foreign relations that the executive power of a nation finds occasion to exert its skill and its strength. - De Tocqueville.
The man who submits to violence is debased by his compliance; but when he submits to that right of authority which he acknowledges in a fellow-creature, he rises in some measure above the person who gives the command. - De Tocqueville.
Violence may seem to be excusable, in defense of the cause of oppressed right. Thus it is, in the vast complication of human laws, that extreme liberty sometimes corrects abuses of liberty, and that extreme democracy obviates the dangers of democracy. - De Tocqueville.
The most powerful of the causes which tend to mitigate the violence of political associations in the United States is universal suffrage. - De Tocqueville.
The further electoral rights are extended, the greater is the need of extending them; for after each concession the strength of the democracy increases, and its demands increase with its strength. - De Tocqueville.
It is extremely difficult in democratic times to draw nations into hostilities; but, on the other, it is almost impossible that any two of them should go to war without embroiling the rest. The interests of all are so interlaced, their opinions and their wants so much alike, that none can remain quiet when the others stir. Wars therefor become more rare, but when they break out, they spread over a larger field. - De Tocqueville.
There are two things which a democratic people will always find very difficult — to begin a war and to end it. - De Tocqueville.
When war is once begun between parties, the government loses its control over society. - De Tocqueville.
I do not wish to speak ill of war: war almost always enlarges the mind of a people, and raises their character. - De Tocqueville.
War, after it has destroyed all modes of speculation, becomes itself the great and sole speculation, to which all the ardent and ambitious desires that equality engenders are exclusively directed. Hence it is, that the selfsame democratic nations which are so reluctant to engage in hostilities, sometimes perform prodigious achievements when once they have taken the field. - De Tocqueville.
War does not always give over democratic communities to military government, but it must invariably and immeasurably increase the powers of civil government; it must almost compulsorily concentrate the direction of all men and the management of all things in the hands of the administration. If it lead not to despotism by sudden violence, it prepares men for it more gently by their habits. - De Tocqueville.
When a democratic people engages in a war after a long peace, it incurs much more risk of defeat than any other nation; but it ought not easily to be cast down by its reverses, for the chances of success for such an army are increased by the duration of the war. When a war has at length, by its long continuance, roused the whole community from their peaceful occupations, and ruined their minor undertakings, the same passions which made them attach so much importance to the maintenance of peace will be turned to arms. - De Tocqueville.
All things considered, and allowances being made for various degrees of morality and enlightenment, we shall generally find in small nations more persons in easy circumstances, more contentment and tranquility, than in large ones. - De Tocqueville.
When hereditary wealth, the privileges of rank, and the prerogatives of birth have ceased to be, and when every man derives his strength from himself alone, it becomes evident that the chief cause of disparity between the fortunes of men is the mind. - De Tocqueville.
Men cannot be cured of the love of riches; but they may be persuaded to enrich themselves by none but honest means. - De Tocqueville.
Unfortunately, too few people have read it these days. That's why I decided to post this. Its long, but I think its a worthwhile reference.
Thanks for the compilation work. It's a great source of quotes.
I have a few copies of the book including an 1840's edition that I found mouldering in the attic of an antique store in Charleston, SC and bought for $1.
-We stand on the shoulders of giants,
but only if their words are searchable in 10 hits or less|-}
LOL! The democratic man wants it all quick and easy...Democracy in America is a substantial work--I would risk saying it's a touchstone to the proper political education--and must be read in it's entirety and thoroughly digested. The rewards are staggering, I assure you.
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