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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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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
Like
Battle
Game
Games
Chance
American
Rebellious
America
Passed
Whole
Revolutionary
Life
Crisis
More quotes by Alexis de Tocqueville
The regime which is destroyed by a revolution is almost always an improvement on its immediate predecessor, and experience teaches that the most critical moment for bad governments is the one which witnesses their first steps toward reform.
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The most durable monument of human labor is that which recalls the wretchedness and nothingness of man.
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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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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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Better use has been made of association and this powerful instrument of action has been applied for more varied aims in America than anywhere else in the world.
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It must not be forgotten that it is especially dangerous to enslave men in the minor details of life.
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Among the laws controlling human societies there is one more precise and clearer, it seems to me, than all the others. If men are to remain civilized or to become civilized, the art of association must develop and improve among them at the same speed as equality of conditions spreads.
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Those that despise people will never get the best out of others and themselves.
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A man who raises himself by degrees to wealth and power, contracts, in the course of this protracted labor, habits of prudence and restraint which he cannot afterwards shake off. A man cannot gradually enlarge his mind as he does his house.
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The civil jury is the most effective form of sovereignty of the people. It defies the aggressions of time and man. During the reigns of Henry VIII (1509-1547) and Elizabeth I (1158-1603), the civil jury did in reality save the liberties of England.
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Every central government worships uniformity: uniformity relieves it from inquiry into an infinity of details.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Nations are less disposed to make revolutions in proportion as personal property is augmented and distributed among them, and as the number of those possessing it is increased.
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The last thing abandoned by a party is its phraseology.
Alexis de Tocqueville
A great democratic revolution is taking place in our midst.
Alexis de Tocqueville
It must not be forgotten that it is especially dangerous to enslave men in the minor details of life. For my part, I should be inclined to think freedom less necessary in the great things than in the little ones, if it were possible to be secure of the one without the other.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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.
Alexis de Tocqueville
The public, therefore, among a democratic people, has a singular power, which aristocratic nations cannot conceive for it does not persuade others to its beliefs, but it imposes them and makes them permeate the thinking of everyone by a sort of enormous pressure of the mind of all upon the individual intelligence.
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The Union was formed by the voluntary agreement of the States and these, in uniting together, have not forfeited their Nationality, nor have they been reduced to the condition of one and the same people. If one of the States chose to withdraw its name from the contract, it would be difficult to disprove its right of doing so.
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The main business of religions is to purify, control, and restrain that excessive and exclusive taste for well-being which men acquire in times of equality.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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.
Alexis de Tocqueville
