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Those that despise people will never get the best out of others and themselves.

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
Best
Never
People
Despise
Others

More quotes by Alexis de Tocqueville

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I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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The most perilous moment for a bad government is when it seeks to mend its ways. Only consummate statecraft can enable a king to save his throne when, after a long spell of oppression, he sets out to improve the lot of his subjects.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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Christianity is the companion of liberty in all its conflicts, the cradle of its infancy, and the divine source of its claims.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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General ideas are no proof of the strength, but rather of the insufficiency of the human intellect.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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Of all nations, those submit to civilization with the most difficulty which habitually live by the chase.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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Society was cut in two: those who had nothing united in common envy those who had anything united in common terror.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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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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No men are less addicted to reverie than the citizens of a democracy.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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The health of a democratic society may be measured by the quality of functions performed by private citizens.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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Slavery...dishonors labor. It introduces idleness into society, and with idleness, ignorance and pride, luxury and distress. It enervates the powers of the mind and benumbs the activity of man.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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The whole life of an American is passed like a game of chance, a revolutionary crisis, or a battle.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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One of the distinguishing characteristics of a democratic period is the taste that all men have for easy success and present enjoyment. This occurs in the pursuits of the intellect as well as in others.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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It is the dissimilarities and inequalities among men which give rise to the notion of honor as such differences become less, it grows feeble and when they disappear, it will vanish too.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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Nature secretly avenges herself for the constraint imposed upon her by the laws of man.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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When, after having examined in detail the organization of the Supreme Court, one comes to consider in sum the prerogatives that have been given it, one discovers without difficulty that a more immense judicial power has never been constituted in any 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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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.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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Though it is very important for man as an individual that his religion should be true, that is not the case for society. Society has nothing to fear or hope from another life what is most important for it is not that all citizens profess the true religion but that they should profess religion.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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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.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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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.
Alexis de Tocqueville