Quote

Furthermore, when citizens are all almost equal, it becomes difficult for them to defend their independence against the aggressions of power.

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
Aggression
Defend
Independence
Citizens
Equal
Becomes
Almost
Aggressions
Difficult
Furthermore

More quotes by Alexis de Tocqueville

Image
There is one universal law that has been formed, or at least adoptedby the majority of mankind. That law is justice. Justice forms the cornerstone of each nation's law.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
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.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
In the United States, the majority undertakes to supply a multitude of ready-made opinions for the use of individuals, who are thus relieved from the necessity of forming opinions of their own.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
The main business of religions is to purify, control, and restrain that excessive and exclusive taste for well-being which men acquire in times of equality.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
Despotism can do without faith but freedom cannot.
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
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.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
In democratic countries as well as elsewhere most of the branches of productive industry are carried on at a small cost by men little removed by their wealth or education above the level of those whom they employ.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
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.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
Can it be believed that the democracy, which has overthrown the feudal system and vanquished kings, will retreat before tradesmen and capitalists?
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
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.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
Those which we call necessary institutions are simply no more than institutions to which we have become accustomed.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
There is no philosopher in the world so great but he believes a million things on the faith of other people and accepts a great many more truths than he demonstrates.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
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.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and shortest means to accomplish it.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
A long war almost always places nations in this sad alternative: that their defeat delivers them to destruction and their triumph to despotism.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
How could a society escape destruction if, when political ties are relaxed, moral ties are not tightened, and what can be done with a people master of itself if it not subject to God?
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
Nobody is going to occupy a place higher than I.
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
A democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it.
Alexis de Tocqueville