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Society is endangered not by the great profligacy of a few, but by the laxity of morals amongst all.

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
Morals
Moral
Society
Great
Profligacy
Laxity
Endangered
Amongst

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In the United States, except for slaves, servants and the destitute fed by townships, everyone has the vote and this is an indirect contributor to law-making. Anyone wishing to attack the law is thus reduced to adopting one of two obvious courses: they must either change the nation's opinion or trample its wishes under foot.
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One of the happiest consequences of the absence of government...is the development of individual strength that inevitably follows.
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In politics a community of hatred is almost always the foundation of friendships.
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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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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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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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In countries where associations are free, secret societies are unknown. In America there are factions, but no conspiracies.
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There is hardly a political question in the United States which does not sooner or later turn into a judicial one.
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Consider any individual at any period of his life, and you will always find him preoccupied with fresh plans to increase his comfort.
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The happy and powerful do not go into exile, and there are no surer guarantees of equality among men than poverty and misfortune.
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You may be sure that if you succeed in bringing your audience into the presence of something that affects them, they will not care by what road you brought them there and they will never reproach you for having excited their emotions in spite of dramatic rules.
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All around you everything is on the move.
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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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Two things in America are astonishing: the changeableness of most human behavior and the strange stability of certain principles. Men are constantly on the move, but the spirit of humanity seems almost unmoved.
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Rulers who destroy men's freedom commonly begin by trying to retain its forms. ... They cherish the illusion that they can combine the prerogatives of absolute power with the moral authority that comes from popular assent.
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The progress of democracy seems irresistible, because it is the most uniform, the most ancient and the most permanent tendency which is to be found in history.
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In the United States, if a political character attacks a sect, this may not prevent even the partisans of that very sect, from supporting him but if he attacks all the sects together, every one abandons him and he remains alone.
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When the people rule, they must be rendered happy, or they will overturn the state.
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Military discipline is merely a perfection of social servitude.
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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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