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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

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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
Great
Possible
Minors
Things
Freedom
Secure
Men
Less
Details
Think
Part
Forgotten
Thinking
Littles
Necessary
Life
Little
Especially
Enslave
Without
Ones
Inclined
Must
Dangerous
Minor

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We succeed in enterprises which demand the positive qualities we possess, but we excel in those which can also make use of our defects.
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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.
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Despotism often presents itself as the repairer of all the ills suffered, the support of just rights, defender of the oppressed, and founder of order.
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Slavery...dishonors labor. It introduces idleness into society, and with idleness, ignorance and pride, luxury and distress. It enervates the powers of the mind and benumbs the activity of man.
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The whole life of an American is passed like a game of chance, a revolutionary crisis, or a battle.
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We need a new political science for a new world.
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I cannot believe that a republic could subsist if the influence of the lawyers in public business did not increase in proportion to the power of the people.
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General ideas are no proof of the strength, but rather of the insufficiency of the human intellect.
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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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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
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To commit violent and unjust acts, it is not enough for a government to have the will or even the power the habits, ideas and passions of the time must lend themselves to their committal.
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In towns it is impossible to prevent men from assembling, getting excited together and forming sudden passionate resolves. Towns are like great meeting houses with all the inhabitants as members. In them the people wield immense influence over their magistrates and often carry their desires into execution without intermediaries.
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What is most important for democracy is not that great fortunes should not exist, but that great fortunes should not remain in the same hands. In that way there are rich men, but they do not form a class.
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A man's admiration of absolute government is proportionate to the contempt he feels for those around him.
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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.
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Nothing seems at first sight less important than the outward form of human actions, yet there is nothing upon which men set more store: they grow used to everything except to living in a society which has not their own manners.
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Men are not corrupted by the exercise of power or debased by the habit of obedience, but by the exercise of a power which they believe to be illegal and by obedience to a rule which they consider to be usurped and oppressive.
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It is easier for the world to accept a simple lie than a complex truth.
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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.
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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.
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