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The man who submits to violence is debased by his compliance but when he submits to that right of authority which he acknowledges in a fellow creature, he rises in some measure above the person who give the command.
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
Men
Creatures
Rises
Authority
Submit
Violence
Creature
Give
Fellow
Persons
Acknowledge
Debased
Person
Command
Submits
Right
Measure
Acknowledges
Giving
Fellows
Compliance
More quotes by Alexis de Tocqueville
Grant me thirty years of equal division of inheritances and a free press, and I will provide you with a republic.
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It is an axiom of political science in the United States that the sole means of neutralizing the effects of newspapers is to multiply their number.
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Those which we call necessary institutions are simply no more than institutions to which we have become accustomed.
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Men are not corrupted by the exercise of power or debased by the habit of obedience, but by the exercise of a power which they believe to be illegal and by obedience to a rule which they consider to be usurped and oppressive.
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The most durable monument of human labor is that which recalls the wretchedness and nothingness of man.
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There is hardly a political question in the United States which does not sooner or later turn into a judicial one.
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I am far from denying that newspapers in democratic countries lead citizens to do very ill-considered things in common but without newspapers there would be hardly any common action at all. So they mend many more ills than they cause.
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Freedom sees in religion the companion of its struggles and its triumphs, the cradle of its infancy, the divine source of its rights. It considers religion as the safeguard of mores and mores as the guarantee of laws and the pledge of its duration.
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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.
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Despotism can do without faith but freedom cannot.
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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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Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.
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Men seldom take the opinion of their equal, or of a man like themselves, upon trust.
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It must not be forgotten that it is especially dangerous to enslave men in the minor details of life.
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When the reality of power has been surrendered, it's playing a dangerous game to seek to retain the appearance of it the external aspect of vigor can sometimes support a debilitated body, but most often it manages to deal it the final blow.
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European Christianity has allowed itself to be intimately united with the powers of this world. Now that these powers are falling, it is as if it were buried under their ruins.
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Every central government worships uniformity: uniformity relieves it from inquiry into an infinity of details.
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All revolutions more or less threaten the tenure of property: but most of those who live in democratic countries are possessed of property - not only are they possessed of property but they live in the condition of men who set the greatest store upon their property.
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There are two things which a democratic people will always find very difficult - to begin a war and to end it.
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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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