Quote

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

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

More quotes by Alexis de Tocqueville

Image
Righteous women in their circle of influence, beginning in the home, can turn the world around.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
Those who prize freedom only for the material benefits it offers have never kept it for long.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
The evil which one suffers patiently as inevitable seems insupportable as soon as he conceives the idea of escaping from it.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
The more I view the independence of the press in its principal effects, the more I convince myself that among the moderns the independence of the press is the capital and so to speak the constitutive element of freedom.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
There are two things which a democratic people will always find very difficult - to begin a war and to end it.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
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.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
The last thing abandoned by a party is its phraseology, because among political parties, as elsewhere, the vulgar make the language, and the vulgar abandon more easily the ideas that have been instilled into it than the words that it has learnt.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
It is far more important to resist apathy than anarchy or despotism, for apathy can give rise, almost indifferently, to either one.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
The most durable monument of human labor is that which recalls the wretchedness and nothingness of man.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
As for me, I am deeply a democrat this is why I am in no way a socialist. Democracy and socialism cannot go together. You can't have it both ways. Socialism is a new form of slavery.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
All around you everything is on the move.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
It is easier for the world to accept a simple lie than a complex truth.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
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
Image
Though it is very important for man as an individual that his religion should be true, that is not the case for society. Society has nothing to fear or hope from another life what is most important for it is not that all citizens profess the true religion but that they should profess religion.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
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.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
Physical strength therefore is one of the first conditions of happiness and even of the existence of nations.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
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.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
If men are to remain civilized or to become so, the art of associating together must grow and improve in the same ratio in which the equality of conditions is increased.
Alexis de Tocqueville