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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.

Alexis de Tocqueville

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Alexis de Tocqueville
Age: 53 †
Born: 1805
Born: July 29
Died: 1859
Died: April 16
Historian
Jurist
Philosopher
Politician
Sociologist
Writer
Paris
France
Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville
Tocqueville
Alexis-Charles-Henri Clerel de Tocqueville
Democracy
Patriotic
Liberty
Liberalism
Politics
Socialism
Word
Notice
Common
Equality
Political
Seeking
Servitude
Nothing
Difference
Restraint
Differences
Seeks

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When the reality of power has been surrendered, it's playing a dangerous game to seek to retain the appearance of it the external aspect of vigor can sometimes support a debilitated body, but most often it manages to deal it the final blow.
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Rulers who destroy men's freedom commonly begin by trying to retain its forms. ... They cherish the illusion that they can combine the prerogatives of absolute power with the moral authority that comes from popular assent.
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Democracy does not create strong ties between people. But it does make living together easier.
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The civil jury is the most effective form of sovereignty of the people. It defies the aggressions of time and man. During the reigns of Henry VIII (1509-1547) and Elizabeth I (1158-1603), the civil jury did in reality save the liberties of England.
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General ideas are no proof of the strength, but rather of the insufficiency of the human intellect.
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In the United States, if a political character attacks a sect, this may not prevent even the partisans of that very sect, from supporting him but if he attacks all the sects together, every one abandons him and he remains alone.
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To get the inestimable good that freedom of the press assures one must know how to submit to the inevitable evil it gives rise to.
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Nothing is more wonderful than the art of being free, but nothing is harder to learn how to use than freedom.
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What chiefly diverts the men of democracies from lofty ambition is not the scantiness of their fortunes, but the vehemence of the exertions they daily make to improve them.
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The public, therefore, among a democratic people, has a singular power, which aristocratic nations cannot conceive for it does not persuade others to its beliefs, but it imposes them and makes them permeate the thinking of everyone by a sort of enormous pressure of the mind of all upon the individual intelligence.
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The territorial aristocracy of former ages was either bound by law, or thought itself bound by usage, to come to the relief of its serving-men and to relieve their distresses. But the manufacturing aristocracy of our age first impoverishes and debases the men who serve it and then abandons them to be supported by the charity of the public.
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When a large number of organs of the press come to advance along the same track, their influence becomes almost irresistible in the long term, and public opinion, struck always from the same side, ends by yielding under their blows.
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The most durable monument of human labor is that which recalls the wretchedness and nothingness of man.
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The position of the Americans is quite exceptional, and it may be believed that no democratic people will ever be placed in a similar one.
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Any measure that establishes legal charity on a permanent basis and gives it an administrative form thereby creates an idle and lazy class, living at the expense of the industrial and working class.
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When fortune has been abolished, when every profession is open to everyone, an ambitious man may think it is easy to launch himself on a great career and feel that he has been called to no common destiny. But this is a delusion which experience quickly corrects.
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Those that despise people will never get the best out of others and themselves.
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Better use has been made of association and this powerful instrument of action has been applied for more varied aims in America than anywhere else in the world.
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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.
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There is no country in the world where the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America.
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