Quote

Generally speaking, only simple conceptions can grip the mind of a nation. An idea that is clear and precise even though false will always have greater power in the world than an idea that is true but complex.

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
Power
Nation
Grip
Ideas
Greater
Precise
Even
Clear
Conception
Mind
Nations
Complexes
Always
Though
Complex
World
Simple
Speaking
Idea
False
True
Generally
Conceptions

More quotes by Alexis de Tocqueville

Image
The Indian knew how to live without wants, to suffer without complaint, and to die singing.
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
Image
The tie of language is perhaps the strongest and the most durable that can unite mankind.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
You need not value it yourself if you do not wish to but you ought to allow it to us who do value it.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
To commit violent and unjust acts, it is not enough for a government to have the will or even the power the habits, ideas and passions of the time must lend themselves to their committal.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
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
Image
The power of the periodical press is second only to that of the people.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
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.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
Nothing is quite so wretchedly corrupt as an aristocracy which has lost its power but kept its wealth and which still has endless leisure to devote to nothing but banal enjoyments. All its great thoughts and passionate energy are things of the past, and nothing but a host of petty, gnawing vices now cling to it like worms to a corpse.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
In America, more than anywhere else in the world, care has been taken constantly to trace clearly distinct spheres of action for the two sexes, and both are required to keep in step, but along paths that are never the same.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democratic paint, but from time to time one can see the old aristocratic colours breaking through.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
The taste which men have for liberty and that which they feel for equality are, in fact, two different things...among democratic nations they are two unequal things.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
It is from the midst of this putrid sewer that the greatest river of human industry springs up and carries fertility to the whole world. From this foul drain pure gold flows forth.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
I have only one passion, the love of liberty and human dignity.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
Furthermore, when citizens are all almost equal, it becomes difficult for them to defend their independence against the aggressions of power.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
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.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
When the people rule, they must be rendered happy, or they will overturn the state.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
The foremost or indeed sole condition required in order to succeed in centralizing the supreme power in a democratic community is to love equality or to get men to believe you love it. Thus, the science of despotism, which was once so complex, has been simplified and reduced, as it were, to a single principle.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
The position of the Americans is quite exceptional, and it may be believed that no democratic people will ever be placed in a similar one.
Alexis de Tocqueville