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We succeed in enterprises which demand the positive qualities we possess, but we excel in those which can also make use of our defects.

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
Quality
Defects
Success
Possess
Use
Qualities
Business
Enterprise
Also
Excellence
Make
Demand
Rehabilitation
Succeed
Enterprises
Positive
Excel

More quotes by Alexis de Tocqueville

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[R]eligion cannot share the material strength of the rulers without being burdened with some of the animosity roused against them.
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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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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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There is one universal law that has been formed, or at least adoptedby the majority of mankind. That law is justice. Justice forms the cornerstone of each nation's law.
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The last thing abandoned by a party is its phraseology.
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Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.... The subjection of individuals will increase amongst democratic nations, not only in the same proportion as their equality, but in the same proportion as their ignorance.
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The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.
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The genius of democracies is seen not only in the great number of new words introduced but even more in the new ideas they express.
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Consider any individual at any period of his life, and you will always find him preoccupied with fresh plans to increase his comfort.
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Amongst democratic nations, each new generation is a new people.
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[Liberty] considers religion as the safeguard of morality, and morality as the best security of law and the surest pledge of the duration of freedom.
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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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Not only does democracy make every man forget his ancestors, but also clouds their view of their descendants and isolates them from their contemporaries. Each man is for ever thrown back on himself alone, and there is danger that he may be shut up in the solitude of his own heart.
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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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How could a society escape destruction if, when political ties are relaxed, moral ties are not tightened, and what can be done with a people master of itself if it not subject to God?
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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.
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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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One of the happiest consequences of the absence of government...is the development of individual strength that inevitably follows.
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Democratic communities have a natural taste for freedom: left to themselves they will seek it, cherish it, and view any deprivation of it with regret. But for equality their passion is ardent, insatiable, incessant, invincible: they call for equality in freedom and if they cannot obtain that, they still call for equality in slavery.
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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.
Alexis de Tocqueville