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Nature secretly avenges herself for the constraint imposed upon her by the laws of man.
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
Imposed
Laws
Law
Upon
Nature
Avenges
Men
Constraint
Secretly
Constraints
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[Liberty] considers religion as the safeguard of morality, and morality as the best security of law and the surest pledge of the duration of freedom.
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There is hardly a congressman prepared to go home until he has at least one speech printed and sent to his constituents, and he won't let anybody interrupt his harangue until he has made all his useful suggestions about the 24 states of the Union, and especially the district he represents.
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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.
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The position of the Americans is quite exceptional, and it may be believed that no democratic people will ever be placed in a similar one.
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I have only one passion, the love of liberty and human dignity.
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Laws are always unstable unless they are founded on the manners of a nation and manners are the only durable and resisting power in a people.
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Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.
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An American cannot converse, but he can discuss, and his talk falls into a dissertation. He speaks to you as if he was addressing a meeting and if he should chance to become warm in the discussion, he will say 'Gentlemen' to the person with whom he is conversing.
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Nations, as well as man, almost always betray the most prominent features of their future destiny in their earliest years.
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The electors see their representative not only as a legislator for the state but also as the natural protector of local interests in the legislature indeed, they almost seem to think that he has a power of attorney to represent each constituent, and they trust him to be as eager in their private interests as in those of the country.
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It is an axiom of political science in the United States that the sole means of neutralizing the effects of newspapers is to multiply their number.
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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.
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The territorial aristocracy of former ages was either bound by law, or thought itself bound by usage, to come to the relief of its serving-men and to relieve their distresses. But the manufacturing aristocracy of our age first impoverishes and debases the men who serve it and then abandons them to be supported by the charity of the public.
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The man who asks of freedom anything other than itself is born to be a slave.
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Rulers who destroy men's freedom commonly begin by trying to retain its forms. ... They cherish the illusion that they can combine the prerogatives of absolute power with the moral authority that comes from popular assent.
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The evil which one suffers patiently as inevitable seems insupportable as soon as he conceives the idea of escaping from it.
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Two things in America are astonishing: the changeableness of most human behavior and the strange stability of certain principles. Men are constantly on the move, but the spirit of humanity seems almost unmoved.
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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.
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Men living in democratic times have many passions, but most of their passions either end in the love of riches, or proceed from it.
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The Indian knew how to live without wants, to suffer without complaint, and to die singing.
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