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The French want no-one to be their superior. The English want inferiors. The Frenchman constantly raises his eyes above him with anxiety. The Englishman lowers his beneath him with satisfaction.

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
French
Frenchman
Raises
Frenchmen
Satisfaction
Englishman
Anxiety
Englishmen
English
Inferiors
Constantly
Beneath
Eyes
Superior
Eye
Superiors
Lowers

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Amongst democratic nations, each new generation is a new people.
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What is not yet done is only what we have not yet attempted to do.
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Democracy does not create strong ties between people. But it does make living together easier.
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I should have loved freedom, I believe, at all times, but in the time in which we live I am ready to worship it.
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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.
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The last thing abandoned by a party is its phraseology, because among political parties, as elsewhere, the vulgar make the language, and the vulgar abandon more easily the ideas that have been instilled into it than the words that it has learnt.
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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 greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.
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As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: how much money will it bring in?
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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.
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He who seeks freedom for anything but freedom's self is made to be a slave.
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It is easier for the world to accept a simple lie than a complex truth.
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It is from the midst of this putrid sewer that the greatest river of human industry springs up and carries fertility to the whole world. From this foul drain pure gold flows forth.
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There is no philosopher in the world so great but he believes a million things on the faith of other people and accepts a great many more truths than he demonstrates.
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Nothing is more annoying in the ordinary intercourse of life than this irritable patriotism of the Americans. A foreigner will gladly agree to praise much in their country, but he would like to be allowed to criticize something, and that he is absolutely refused.
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The man who asks of freedom anything other than itself is born to be a slave.
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Of all nations, those submit to civilization with the most difficulty which habitually live by the chase.
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No state of society or laws can render men so much alike but that education, fortune, and tastes will interpose some differences between them and though different men may sometimes find it their interest to combine for the same purposes, they will never make it their pleasure.
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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.
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