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I cannot believe that a republic could subsist if the influence of the lawyers in public business did not increase in proportion to the power of the people.

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
Believe
Proportion
People
Lawyer
Increase
Influence
Public
Business
Subsist
Cannot
Lawyers
Power
Republic

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I am unaware of his plans but I shall never stop believing in them because I cannot fathom them and I prefer to mistrust my own intellectual capacities than his justice.
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The prejudice of the race appears stronger in the States that have abolished slaves than in the States where slavery still exists. White carpenters, white bricklayers, and white painters will not work side by side with the blacks in the North but do it in almost every Southern State.
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The whole life of an American is passed like a game of chance, a revolutionary crisis, or a battle.
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The best laws cannot make a constitution work in spite of morals morals can turn the worst laws to advantage.
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No stigma attaches to the love of money in America, and provided it does not exceed the bounds imposed by public order, it is held in honor. The American will describe as noble and estimable ambition that our medieval ancestors would have called base cupidity.
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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.
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Democratic institutions generally give men a lofty notion of their country and themselves.
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But what most astonishes me in the United States, is not so much the marvelous grandeur of some undertakings, as the innumerable multitude of small ones.
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Despotism can do without faith but freedom cannot.
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With much care and skill power has been broken into fragments in the American township, so that the maximum possible number of people have some concern with public affairs.
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The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.
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The tie of language is perhaps the strongest and the most durable that can unite mankind.
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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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To get the inestimable good that freedom of the press assures one must know how to submit to the inevitable evil it gives rise to.
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In towns it is impossible to prevent men from assembling, getting excited together and forming sudden passionate resolves. Towns are like great meeting houses with all the inhabitants as members. In them the people wield immense influence over their magistrates and often carry their desires into execution without intermediaries.
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In the United States, except for slaves, servants and the destitute fed by townships, everyone has the vote and this is an indirect contributor to law-making. Anyone wishing to attack the law is thus reduced to adopting one of two obvious courses: they must either change the nation's opinion or trample its wishes under foot.
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The principle of equality does not destroy the imagination, but lowers its flight to the level of the earth.
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The more alike men are, the weaker each feels in the face of all.
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One of the happiest consequences of the absence of government...is the development of individual strength that inevitably follows.
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It is far more important to resist apathy than anarchy or despotism, for apathy can give rise, almost indifferently, to either one.
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