Quote

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

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
United
Defend
Strong
Attack
Facts
Christianity
America
Therefore
States
Hold
Irresistibly
Mind
Either
Undertakes
Public
Retained
Fact
Established

More quotes by Alexis de Tocqueville

Image
The best laws cannot make a constitution work in spite of morals morals can turn the worst laws to advantage.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
I have always noticed in politics how often men are ruined by having too good a memory.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
I do not know if the people of the United States would vote for superior men if they ran for office, but there can be no doubt that such men do not run.
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
In America, more than anywhere else in the world, care has been taken constantly to trace clearly distinct spheres of action for the two sexes, and both are required to keep in step, but along paths that are never the same.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
In a revolution, as in a novel, the most difficult part to invent is the end.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
The French want no-one to be their superior. The English want inferiors. The Frenchman constantly raises his eyes above him with anxiety. The Englishman lowers his beneath him with satisfaction.
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
America is great because she is good.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
As I see it, only God can be all-powerful without danger, because his wisdom and justice are always equal to his power. Thus there is no authority on earth so inherently worthy of respect, or invested with a right so sacred, that I would want to let it act without oversight or rule without impediment (p. 290).
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
The happy and powerful do not go into exile, and there are no surer guarantees of equality among men than poverty and misfortune.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
All revolutions more or less threaten the tenure of property: but most of those who live in democratic countries are possessed of property - not only are they possessed of property but they live in the condition of men who set the greatest store upon their property.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
As for me, I am deeply a democrat this is why I am in no way a socialist. Democracy and socialism cannot go together. You can't have it both ways. Socialism is a new form of slavery.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
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
Image
Amongst democratic nations, each new generation is a new people.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
I am unaware of his plans but I shall never stop believing in them because I cannot fathom them and I prefer to mistrust my own intellectual capacities than his justice.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
I must say that I have seen Americans make great and real sacrifices to the public welfare and have noticed a hundred instances in which they hardly ever failed to lend faithful support to one another.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
The people reign over the American political world as God rules over the universe. It is the cause and the end of all things everything rises out of it and is absorbed back into it.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
America is a land of wonders, in which everything is in constant motion and every change seems an improvement.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Image
When a large number of organs of the press come to advance along the same track, their influence becomes almost irresistible in the long term, and public opinion, struck always from the same side, ends by yielding under their blows.
Alexis de Tocqueville