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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.

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
Growing
Reply
Education
Mainly
Women
Superiority
Prosperity
Americans
Asked
Strength
Attributed
Ought
Singular

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All revolutions more or less threaten the tenure of property: but most of those who live in democratic countries are possessed of property - not only are they possessed of property but they live in the condition of men who set the greatest store upon their property.
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Men will not receive the truth from their enemies, and it is seldom offered to them by their friends.
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Men cannot abandon their religious faith without a kind of aberration of intellect and a sort of violent distortion of their true nature they are invincibly brought back to more pious sentiments. Unbelief is an accident, and faith is the only permanent state of mankind.
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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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Men seldom take the opinion of their equal, or of a man like themselves, upon trust.
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In the United States, associations are established to promote the public safety, commerce, industry, morality, and religion. There is no end which the human will despairs of attaining through the combined power of individuals united into a society.
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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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Despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot. How is it possible that society should escape destruction if the moral tie is not strengthened in proportion as the political tie is relaxed? And what can be done with a people who are their own masters if they are not submissive to the Deity?
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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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However energetically society in general may strive to make all the citizens equal and alike, the personal pride of each individual will always make him try to escape from the common level, and he will form some inequality somewhere to his own profit.
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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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The world belongs to those with the most energy.
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Lawyers belong to the people by birth and interest, and to the aristocracy by habit and taste they may be looked upon as the connecting link of the two great classes of society.
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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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There is hardly a pioneer's hut which does not contain a few odd volumes of Shakespeare. I remember reading the feudal drama of Henry V for the first time in a log cabin.
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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.
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History, it is easily perceived, is a picture-gallery containing a host of copies and very few originals.
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One has freedom as the principal means of action the other has servitude. Their . . . paths [are] diverse nevertheless, each seems called by some secret design of Providence one day to hold in its hands the destinies of half the world.
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America is a land of wonders, in which everything is in constant motion and every change seems an improvement.
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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.
Alexis de Tocqueville