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Men seldom take the opinion of their equal, or of a man like themselves, upon trust.
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
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Seldom
Equal
Trust
Opinion
Upon
Take
Men
More quotes by Alexis de Tocqueville
Trade is the natural enemy of all violent passions. Trade loves moderation, delights in compromise, and is most careful to avoid anger. It is patient, supple, and insinuating, only resorting to extreme measures in cases of absolute necessity.
Alexis de Tocqueville
One of the most ordinary weaknesses of the human intellect is to seek to reconcile contrary principles, and to purchase peace at the expense of logic.
Alexis de Tocqueville
In countries where associations are free, secret societies are unknown. In America there are factions, but no conspiracies.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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?
Alexis de Tocqueville
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
No protracted war can fail to endanger the freedom of a democratic country.
Alexis de Tocqueville
The genius of democracies is seen not only in the great number of new words introduced but even more in the new ideas they express.
Alexis de Tocqueville
There is no philosopher in the world so great but he believes a million things on the faith of other people and accepts a great many more truths than he demonstrates.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Not only does democracy make every man forget his ancestors, but also clouds their view of their descendants and isolates them from their contemporaries. Each man is for ever thrown back on himself alone, and there is danger that he may be shut up in the solitude of his own heart.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Of all the countries of the world America is the one where the movement of thought and human industry is the most continuous and swift.
Alexis de Tocqueville
I avow that I do not hold that complete and instantaneous love for the freedom of the press that one accords to things whose nature is unqualifiedly good. I love it out of consideration for the evils it prevents much more than for the good it does.
Alexis de Tocqueville
The whole life of an American is passed like a game of chance, a revolutionary crisis, or a battle.
Alexis de Tocqueville
The most perilous moment for a bad government is when it seeks to mend its ways. Only consummate statecraft can enable a king to save his throne when, after a long spell of oppression, he sets out to improve the lot of his subjects.
Alexis de Tocqueville
We can state with conviction, therefore, that a man's support for absolute government is in direct proportion to the contempt he feels for his country.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Christianity is the companion of liberty in all its conflicts, the cradle of its infancy, and the divine source of its claims.
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
I have seen Americans making great and sincere sacrifices for the key common good and a hundred times I have noticed that, when needs be, they almost always gave each other faithful support
Alexis de Tocqueville
Nobody is going to occupy a place higher than I.
Alexis de Tocqueville
