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On this waterlogged landscape....are scattered palaces and hovels....It is here that the human spirit becomes perfect, and at the same time brutalised, that civilisation produces its marvels and that civilised man returns to the savage.

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
Time
Return
Civilisation
Becomes
Palaces
Cities
Savage
Perfect
Returns
Spirit
Savages
Hovels
Human
Produces
Marvels
Humans
Landscape
Civilised
Men
Produce
Scattered

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Useful undertakings which require sustained attention and vigorous precision in order to succeed often end up by being abandoned, for, in America, as elsewhere, the people move forward by sudden impulses and short-lived efforts.
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It is easier for the world to accept a simple lie than a complex truth.
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When, after having examined in detail the organization of the Supreme Court, one comes to consider in sum the prerogatives that have been given it, one discovers without difficulty that a more immense judicial power has never been constituted in any people.
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Religion, which never intervenes directly in the government of American society, should therefore be considered as the first of their political institutions
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When none but the wealthy had watches, they were almost all very good ones few are now made which are worth much, but everybody has one in his pocket.
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I have an intellectual inclination for democratic institutions, but I am instinctively an aristocrat, which means that I despise and fear the masses. I passionately love liberty, legality, the respect for rights, but not democracy....liberty is my foremost passion. That is the truth.
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Can it be believed that the democracy, which has overthrown the feudal system and vanquished kings, will retreat before tradesmen and capitalists?
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The more government takes the place of associations, the more will individuals lose the idea of forming associations and need the government to come to their help. That is a vicious circle of cause and effect.
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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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In America one of the first things done in a new State is to make the post go there in the forests of Michigan there is no cabin so isolated, no valley so wild, but that letters and newspapers arrive at least once a week.
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Equality is a slogan based on envy. It signifies in the heart of every republican: Nobody is going to occupy a place higher than I.
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The will of the nation is one of those phrases most widely abused by schemers and tyrants of all ages.
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Democracy does not create strong ties between people. But it does make living together easier.
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In democratic countries, however opulent a man is supposed to be, he is almost always discontented with his fortune, because he finds that he is less rich than his father was, and he fears that his sons will be less rich than himself.
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I considered mores to be one of the great general causes responsible for the maintenance of a democratic republic . . . the term mores . . . meaning . . . habits of the heart.
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In democratic centuries, on the contrary, when the duties of each individual toward the species are much clearer, devotion toward one man becomes rarer: the bond of human affections is extended and loosened.
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As I see it, only God can be all-powerful without danger, because his wisdom and justice are always equal to his power. Thus there is no authority on earth so inherently worthy of respect, or invested with a right so sacred, that I would want to let it act without oversight or rule without impediment (p. 290).
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In politics a community of hatred is almost always the foundation of friendships.
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Americans of all ages, all stations of life, and all types of disposition are forever forming associations. In democratic countries knowledge of how to combine is the mother of all other forms of knowledge on its progress depends that of all the others.
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In democracies, nothing is more great or more brilliant than commerce: it attracts the attention of the public, and fills the imagination of the multitude all energetic passions are directed towards it.
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