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In America the majority raises formidable barriers around the liberty of opinion within these barriers an author may write what he pleases, but woe to him if he goes beyond them.

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
Write
Majority
Around
Please
America
Beyond
Pleases
May
Goes
Formidable
Writing
Liberty
Woe
Opinion
Barriers
Within
Author
Freedom
Raises

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But what most astonishes me in the United States, is not so much the marvelous grandeur of some undertakings, as the innumerable multitude of small ones.
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Nature secretly avenges herself for the constraint imposed upon her by the laws of man.
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We can state with conviction, therefore, that a man's support for absolute government is in direct proportion to the contempt he feels for his country.
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Nothing is so dangerous as that of violence employed by well-meaning people for beneficial objects.
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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.
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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.
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If I were asked ... to what the singular prosperity and growing strength of Americans ought mainly to be attributed, I should reply: To the superiority of their women.
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The taste for well-being is the prominent and indelible feature of democratic times.
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America is great because she is good.
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Society is endangered not by the great profligacy of a few, but by the laxity of morals amongst all.
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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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Grant me thirty years of equal division of inheritances and a free press, and I will provide you with a republic.
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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.
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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.
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In democracies, nothing is more great or more brilliant than commerce: it attracts the attention of the public, and fills the imagination of the multitude all energetic passions are directed towards it.
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The last thing a political party gives up is its vocabulary.
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Democratic institutions generally give men a lofty notion of their country and themselves.
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Righteous women in their circle of influence, beginning in the home, can turn the world around.
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The French under the old monarchy held it for a maxim that the king could do no wrong . The Americans entertain the same opinion with respect to the majority.... If ever the free institutions of America are destroyed, that event may be attributed to the omnipotence of the majority.
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