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There are two things which a democratic people will always find very difficult - to begin a war and to end it.
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
Ends
Find
Always
Things
Democratic
People
Begin
War
Difficult
Two
More quotes by Alexis de Tocqueville
The man who asks of freedom anything other than itself is born to be a slave.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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
The most formidable of all the ills that threaten the future of the Union arises from the presence of a black population upon its territory and in contemplating the cause of the present embarrassments, or the future dangers of the United States, the observer is invariably led to this as a primary fact.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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
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.
Alexis de Tocqueville
I am far from denying that newspapers in democratic countries lead citizens to do very ill-considered things in common but without newspapers there would be hardly any common action at all. So they mend many more ills than they cause.
Alexis de Tocqueville
I know of no other country where love of money has such a grip on men's hearts or where stronger scorn is expressed for the theory of permanent equality of property
Alexis de Tocqueville
Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Freedom sees in religion the companion of its struggles and its triumphs, the cradle of its infancy, the divine source of its rights. It considers religion as the safeguard of mores and mores as the guarantee of laws and the pledge of its duration.
Alexis de Tocqueville
I have only one passion, the love of liberty and human dignity.
Alexis de Tocqueville
The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democratic paint, but from time to time one can see the old aristocratic colours breaking through.
Alexis de Tocqueville
What is not yet done is only what we have not yet attempted to do.
Alexis de Tocqueville
There is no country in the world in which everything can be provided for by the laws, or in which political institutions can prove a substitute for common sense and public morality.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Comfort becomes a goal when distinctions of rank are abolished and privileges destroyed.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Men seldom take the opinion of their equal, or of a man like themselves, upon trust.
Alexis de Tocqueville
The Indian knew how to live without wants, to suffer without complaint, and to die singing.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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
One of the happiest consequences of the absence of government...is the development of individual strength that inevitably follows.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Chance does nothing that has not been prepared beforehand.
Alexis de Tocqueville
I should have loved freedom, I believe, at all times, but in the time in which we live I am ready to worship it.
Alexis de Tocqueville
