Quote

A newspaper is an adviser who does not require to be sought, but who comes of his own accord, and talks to you briefly every day of the common wealth, without distracting you from your private affairs.

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
Every
Newspapers
Briefly
Affair
Adviser
Private
Accord
Wealth
Sought
Common
Newspaper
Comes
Talks
Doe
Affairs
Without
Require
Distracting

More quotes by Alexis de Tocqueville

Image
The most dangerous moment for a bad government is when it begins to reform.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
The most perilous moment for a bad government is when it seeks to mend its ways. Only consummate statecraft can enable a king to save his throne when, after a long spell of oppression, he sets out to improve the lot of his subjects.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
Among these widely differing families of men, the first that attracts attention, the superior in intelligence, in power, and in enjoyment, is the white, or European, the MAN pre-eminently so called, below him appear the Negro and the Indian.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
Religion, which never intervenes directly in the government of American society, should therefore be considered as the first of their political institutions
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
If ever America undergoes great revolutions, they will be brought about by the presence of the black race on the soil of the United States - that is to say, they will owe their origin not to the equality but to the inequality of conditions.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
If there ever are great revolutions there, they will be caused by the presence of the blacks upon American soil.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
America is great because she is good.
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
There is hardly a pioneer's hut which does not contain a few odd volumes of Shakespeare. I remember reading the feudal drama of Henry V for the first time in a log cabin.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
Trade is the natural enemy of all violent passions. Trade loves moderation, delights in compromise, and is most careful to avoid anger. It is patient, supple, and insinuating, only resorting to extreme measures in cases of absolute necessity.
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
Men cannot abandon their religious faith without a kind of aberration of intellect and a sort of violent distortion of their true nature they are invincibly brought back to more pious sentiments. Unbelief is an accident, and faith is the only permanent state of mankind.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
I know of no other country where love of money has such a grip on men's hearts or where stronger scorn is expressed for the theory of permanent equality of property
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
The man who asks of freedom anything other than itself is born to be a slave.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
On close inspection, we shall find that religion, and not fear, has ever been the cause of the long-lived prosperity of an absolute government.
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
One of the happiest consequences of the absence of government...is the development of individual strength that inevitably follows.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
Society was cut in two: those who had nothing united in common envy those who had anything united in common terror.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
In America a woman loses her independence for ever in the bonds of matrimony. While there is less constraint on girls there than anywhere else, a wife submits to stricter obligations. For the former, her father's house is a home of freedom and pleasure for the latter, her husband's is almost a cloister.
Alexis de Tocqueville