Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
But one also finds in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to want to bring the strong down to their level, and which reduces men to preferring equality in servitude to inequality in freedom.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
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
Humans
Taste
Preferring
Heart
Level
Reduces
Men
Levels
Depraved
Bring
Servitude
Freedom
Inequality
Strong
Finds
Also
Equality
Human
Weak
Impels
More quotes by Alexis de Tocqueville
The best laws cannot make a constitution work in spite of morals morals can turn the worst laws to advantage.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Lawyers belong to the people by birth and interest, and to the aristocracy by habit and taste they may be looked upon as the connecting link of the two great classes of society.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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.
Alexis de Tocqueville
In a revolution, as in a novel, the most difficult part to invent is the end.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Nothing is so dangerous as that of violence employed by well-meaning people for beneficial objects.
Alexis de Tocqueville
In countries where associations are free, secret societies are unknown. In America there are factions, but no conspiracies.
Alexis de Tocqueville
The taste for well-being is the prominent and indelible feature of democratic times.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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
The progress of democracy seems irresistible, because it is the most uniform, the most ancient and the most permanent tendency which is to be found in history.
Alexis de Tocqueville
At the head of any new undertaking where in France you would find the government, or in England some great lord, in the United States you are sure to find an association.
Alexis de Tocqueville
When the people rule, they must be rendered happy, or they will overturn the state.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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
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
In politics a community of hatred is almost always the foundation of friendships.
Alexis de Tocqueville
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
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
Men will not receive the truth from their enemies, and it is seldom offered to them by their friends.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Better use has been made of association and this powerful instrument of action has been applied for more varied aims in America than anywhere else in the world.
Alexis de Tocqueville
One has freedom as the principal means of action the other has servitude. Their . . . paths [are] diverse nevertheless, each seems called by some secret design of Providence one day to hold in its hands the destinies of half the world.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Amongst democratic nations, each new generation is a new people.
Alexis de Tocqueville
