Quote

We need a new political science for a new world.

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
Science
Political
Need
Needs
World

More quotes by Alexis de Tocqueville

Image
Nations, as well as man, almost always betray the most prominent features of their future destiny in their earliest years.
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
To get the inestimable good that freedom of the press assures one must know how to submit to the inevitable evil it gives rise to.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
In towns it is impossible to prevent men from assembling, getting excited together and forming sudden passionate resolves. Towns are like great meeting houses with all the inhabitants as members. In them the people wield immense influence over their magistrates and often carry their desires into execution without intermediaries.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
Despotism may be able to do without religion, but democracy cannot.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
No men are less addicted to reverie than the citizens of a democracy.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
When fortune has been abolished, when every profession is open to everyone, an ambitious man may think it is easy to launch himself on a great career and feel that he has been called to no common destiny. But this is a delusion which experience quickly corrects.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
Equality is a slogan based on envy. It signifies in the heart of every republican: Nobody is going to occupy a place higher than I.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
Those that despise people will never get the best out of others and themselves.
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
Life is to be entered upon with courage.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
With much care and skill power has been broken into fragments in the American township, so that the maximum possible number of people have some concern with public affairs.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
It is easy to see that, even in the freedom of early youth, an American girl never quite loses control of herself she enjoys all permitted pleasures without losing her head about any of them, and her reason never lets the reins go, though it may often seem to let them flap.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
The will of the nation is one of those phrases most widely abused by schemers and tyrants of all ages.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
Despotism often presents itself as the repairer of all the ills suffered, the support of just rights, defender of the oppressed, and founder of order.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
The last thing abandoned by a party is its phraseology.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
When the reality of power has been surrendered, it's playing a dangerous game to seek to retain the appearance of it the external aspect of vigor can sometimes support a debilitated body, but most often it manages to deal it the final blow.
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
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