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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
Word
Notice
Common
Equality
Political
Seeking
Servitude
Nothing
Difference
Restraint
Differences
Seeks
Democracy
Patriotic
Liberty
Liberalism
Politics
Socialism

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The taste which men have for liberty and that which they feel for equality are, in fact, two different things...among democratic nations they are two unequal things.
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Despotism may be able to do without religion, but democracy cannot.
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It must not be forgotten that it is especially dangerous to enslave men in the minor details of life. For my part, I should be inclined to think freedom less necessary in the great things than in the little ones, if it were possible to be secure of the one without the other.
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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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I do not know if the people of the United States would vote for superior men if they ran for office, but there can be no doubt that such men do not run.
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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.
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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 give the command.
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The aspect of American society is animated, because men and things are always changing but it is monotonous, because all the changes are alike.
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Men living in democratic times have many passions, but most of their passions either end in the love of riches, or proceed from it.
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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.
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Men seldom take the opinion of their equal, or of a man like themselves, upon trust.
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By obliging men to turn their attention to other affairs than their own, it rubs off that private selfishness which is the rust of society.
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The French under the old monarchy held it for a maxim that the king could do no wrong . The Americans entertain the same opinion with respect to the majority.... If ever the free institutions of America are destroyed, that event may be attributed to the omnipotence of the majority.
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To remain silent is the most useful service that a mediocre speaker can render to the public good.
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The more I view the independence of the press in its principal effects, the more I convince myself that among the moderns the independence of the press is the capital and so to speak the constitutive element of freedom.
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Grant me thirty years of equal division of inheritances and a free press, and I will provide you with a republic.
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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.
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As the past has ceased to throw its light upon the future, the mind of man wanders in obscurity.
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All revolutions more or less threaten the tenure of property: but most of those who live in democratic countries are possessed of property - not only are they possessed of property but they live in the condition of men who set the greatest store upon their property.
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Freedom sees in religion the companion of its struggles and its triumphs, the cradle of its infancy, the divine source of its rights. It considers religion as the safeguard of mores and mores as the guarantee of laws and the pledge of its duration.
Alexis de Tocqueville