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When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness.

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
Past
Darkness
Motivational
Longer
Walks
Future
History
Illuminates
Inspirational
Enamored
Spirit
Walking

More quotes by Alexis de Tocqueville

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I cannot believe that a republic could subsist if the influence of the lawyers in public business did not increase in proportion to the power of the people.
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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.
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Religion, which never intervenes directly in the government of American society, should therefore be considered as the first of their political institutions
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Generally speaking, only simple conceptions can grip the mind of a nation. An idea that is clear and precise even though false will always have greater power in the world than an idea that is true but complex.
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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.
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Nobody is going to occupy a place higher than I.
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In the principle of equality I very clearly discern two tendencies one leading the mind of every man to untried thoughts, the other prohibiting him from thinking at all.
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Despotism often presents itself as the repairer of all the ills suffered, the support of just rights, defender of the oppressed, and founder of order.
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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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Can it be believed that the democracy, which has overthrown the feudal system and vanquished kings, will retreat before tradesmen and capitalists?
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Amongst democratic nations, each new generation is a new people.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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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.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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I considered mores to be one of the great general causes responsible for the maintenance of a democratic republic . . . the term mores . . . meaning . . . habits of the heart.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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He [Napoleon] was as great as a man can be without morality.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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But one also finds in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to want to bring the strong down to their level, and which reduces men to preferring equality in servitude to inequality in freedom.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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Men seldom take the opinion of their equal, or of a man like themselves, upon trust.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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No state of society or laws can render men so much alike but that education, fortune, and tastes will interpose some differences between them and though different men may sometimes find it their interest to combine for the same purposes, they will never make it their pleasure.
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I see no clear reason why the doctrine of self-interest properly understood should turn men away from religious beliefs.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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When none but the wealthy had watches, they were almost all very good ones few are now made which are worth much, but everybody has one in his pocket.
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Among a democratic people, where there is no hereditary wealth, every man works to earn a living, or is born of parents who have worked. The notion of labor is therefore presented to the mind, on every side, as the necessary, natural, and honest condition.
Alexis de Tocqueville