Quote

History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.

Alexis de Tocqueville

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Many
Gallery
Copies
Originals
Pictures
Historical
History
Reality

More quotes by Alexis de Tocqueville

Image
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.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
The only authors whom I acknowledge as American are the journalists. They, indeed, are not great writers, but they speak the language of their countrymen, and make themselves heard by them.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
The man who asks of freedom anything other than itself is born to be a slave.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
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.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
The prejudice of the race appears stronger in the States that have abolished slaves than in the States where slavery still exists. White carpenters, white bricklayers, and white painters will not work side by side with the blacks in the North but do it in almost every Southern State.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
In a revolution, as in a novel, the most difficult part to invent is the end.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
The more alike men are, the weaker each feels in the face of all.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
The Americans combine the notions of religion and liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive of one without the other.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
Democratic nations care but little for what has been, but they are haunted by visions of what will be.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
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.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
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.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
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.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
The will of the nation is one of those phrases most widely abused by schemers and tyrants of all ages.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
The electors see their representative not only as a legislator for the state but also as the natural protector of local interests in the legislature indeed, they almost seem to think that he has a power of attorney to represent each constituent, and they trust him to be as eager in their private interests as in those of the country.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
The evil which one suffers patiently as inevitable seems insupportable as soon as he conceives the idea of escaping from it.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
The foremost or indeed sole condition 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, has been simplified and reduced, as it were, to a single principle.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
The Indian knew how to live without wants, to suffer without complaint, and to die singing.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
Of all nations, those submit to civilization with the most difficulty which habitually live by the chase.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
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.
Alexis de Tocqueville