Quote

The best laws cannot make a constitution work in spite of morals morals can turn the worst laws to advantage.

Alexis de Tocqueville

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Moral
Morals
Turns
Spite
Cannot
Laws
Best
Constitution
Work
Advantage
Make
Turn
Worst
Law

More quotes by Alexis de Tocqueville

Image
In politics a community of hatred is almost always the foundation of friendships.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
The Americans combine the notions of religion and liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive of one without the other.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
Grant me thirty years of equal division of inheritances and a free press, and I will provide you with a republic.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
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
Image
The legislator is like the navigator of a ship on the high seas. He can steer the vessel on which he sails, but he cannot alter its construction, raise the wind, or stop the waves from swelling beneath his feet.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
The character of Anglo-American civilization . . . is the product . . . of two perfectly distinct elements that elsewhere have often made war with each other, but which, in America, they have succeeded in incorporating somehow into one another and combining marvelously. I mean to speak of the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
Those which we call necessary institutions are simply no more than institutions to which we have become accustomed.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
The only authors whom I acknowledge as American are the journalists. They, indeed, are not great writers, but they speak the language of their countrymen, and make themselves heard by them.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
When I refuse to obey an unjust law, I do not contest the right of the majority to command, but I simply appeal from the sovereignty of the people to the sovereignty of mankind.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
No men are less addicted to reverie than the citizens of a democracy.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
Though it is very important for man as an individual that his religion should be true, that is not the case for society. Society has nothing to fear or hope from another life what is most important for it is not that all citizens profess the true religion but that they should profess religion.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
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.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
Military discipline is merely a perfection of social servitude.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
Men will not receive the truth from their enemies, and it is seldom offered to them by their friends.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
The last thing a political party gives up is its vocabulary.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
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.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
How could a society escape destruction if, when political ties are relaxed, moral ties are not tightened, and what can be done with a people master of itself if it not subject to God?
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
We succeed in enterprises which demand the positive qualities we possess, but we excel in those which can also make use of our defects.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
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.
Alexis de Tocqueville