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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

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

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Better use has been made of association and this powerful instrument of action has been applied for more varied aims in America than anywhere else in the world.
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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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If an American was condemned to confine his activity to his own affairs, he would be robbed of one half of his existence.
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The world belongs to those with the most energy.
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The health of a democratic society may be measured by the quality of functions performed by private citizens.
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In America, conscription is unknown men are enlisted for payment. Compulsory recruitment is so alien to the ideas and so foreign to the customs of the people of the United States that I doubt whether they would ever dare to introduce it into their law.
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As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: how much money will it bring in?
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When fortune has been abolished, when every profession is open to everyone, an ambitious man may think it is easy to launch himself on a great career and feel that he has been called to no common destiny. But this is a delusion which experience quickly corrects.
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A man who raises himself by degrees to wealth and power, contracts, in the course of this protracted labor, habits of prudence and restraint which he cannot afterwards shake off. A man cannot gradually enlarge his mind as he does his house.
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Military discipline is merely a perfection of social servitude.
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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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Countries, therefore, when lawmaking falls exclusively to the lot of the poor cannot hope for much economy in public expenditure expenses will always be considerable, either because taxes cannot touch those who vote for them or because they are assessed in a way to prevent that.
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Town meetings are to liberty what primary schools are to science they bring it within the people's reach.
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What chiefly diverts the men of democracies from lofty ambition is not the scantiness of their fortunes, but the vehemence of the exertions they daily make to improve them.
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Christianity has therefore retained a strong hold on the public mind in America... In the United States... Christianity itself is a fact so irresistibly established, that no one undertakes either to attack or to defend it.
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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.
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Slavery...dishonors labor. It introduces idleness into society, and with idleness, ignorance and pride, luxury and distress. It enervates the powers of the mind and benumbs the activity of man.
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I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America.
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Men seldom take the opinion of their equal, or of a man like themselves, upon trust.
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Those that despise people will never get the best out of others and themselves.
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