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Laws are always unstable unless they are founded on the manners of a nation and manners are the only durable and resisting power in a people.
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
Always
Founded
People
Manners
Laws
Unless
Nation
Law
Durable
Nations
Unstable
Power
Resisting
More quotes by Alexis de Tocqueville
Men living in democratic times have many passions, but most of their passions either end in the love of riches, or proceed from it.
Alexis de Tocqueville
By obliging men to turn their attention to other affairs than their own, it rubs off that private selfishness which is the rust of society.
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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.
Alexis de Tocqueville
It is far more important to resist apathy than anarchy or despotism, for apathy can give rise, almost indifferently, to either one.
Alexis de Tocqueville
No protracted war can fail to endanger the freedom of a democratic country.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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
The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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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Town meetings are to liberty what primary schools are to science they bring it within the people's reach.
Alexis de Tocqueville
I should have loved freedom, I believe, at all times, but in the time in which we live I am ready to worship it.
Alexis de Tocqueville
But one also finds in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to want to bring the strong down to their level, and which reduces men to preferring equality in servitude to inequality in freedom.
Alexis de Tocqueville
At the head of any new undertaking where in France you would find the government, or in England some great lord, in the United States you are sure to find an association.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Life is to be entered upon with courage.
Alexis de Tocqueville
In politics a community of hatred is almost always the foundation of friendships.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.
Alexis de Tocqueville
On close inspection, we shall find that religion, and not fear, has ever been the cause of the long-lived prosperity of an absolute government.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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.
Alexis de Tocqueville
As for me, I am deeply a democrat this is why I am in no way a socialist. Democracy and socialism cannot go together. You can't have it both ways. Socialism is a new form of slavery.
Alexis de Tocqueville
We need a new political science for a new world.
Alexis de Tocqueville
