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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
People
Despise
Others
Best
Never

More quotes by Alexis de Tocqueville

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America is a land of wonders, in which everything is in constant motion and every change seems an improvement. No natural boundary seems to be set to the efforts of man and in his eyes what is not yet done is only what he has not attempted to do. - from Democracy in America
Alexis de Tocqueville
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European Christianity has allowed itself to be intimately united with the powers of this world. Now that these powers are falling, it is as if it were buried under their ruins.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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The principle of equality does not destroy the imagination, but lowers its flight to the level of the earth.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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Nothing is more wonderful than the art of being free, but nothing is harder to learn how to use than freedom.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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When an American asks for the cooperation of his fellow citizens, it is seldom refused and I have often seen it afforded spontaneously and with great good will.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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The territorial aristocracy of former ages was either bound by law, or thought itself bound by usage, to come to the relief of its serving-men and to relieve their distresses. But the manufacturing aristocracy of our age first impoverishes and debases the men who serve it and then abandons them to be supported by the charity of the public.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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A long war almost always places nations in this sad alternative: that their defeat delivers them to destruction and their triumph to despotism.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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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.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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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.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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Any measure that establishes legal charity on a permanent basis and gives it an administrative form thereby creates an idle and lazy class, living at the expense of the industrial and working class.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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A state of equality is perhaps less elevated, but it is more just and its justice constitutes its greatness and beauty.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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Despotism can do without faith but freedom cannot.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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Lawyers belong to the people by birth and interest, and to the aristocracy by habit and taste they may be looked upon as the connecting link of the two great classes of society.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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So many of my thoughts and feelings are shared by the English that England has turned into a second native land of the mind for me.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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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.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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Every central government worships uniformity: uniformity relieves it from inquiry into an infinity of details.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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In democratic countries, however opulent a man is supposed to be, he is almost always discontented with his fortune, because he finds that he is less rich than his father was, and he fears that his sons will be less rich than himself.
Alexis de Tocqueville