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One of the happiest consequences of the absence of government...is the development of individual strength that inevitably follows.

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
Government
Inevitably
Follows
Consequences
Absence
Consequence
Development
Strength
Individual
Happiest

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To commit violent and unjust acts, it is not enough for a government to have the will or even the power the habits, ideas and passions of the time must lend themselves to their committal.
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Americans of all ages, all stations of life, and all types of disposition are forever forming associations. In democratic countries knowledge of how to combine is the mother of all other forms of knowledge on its progress depends that of all the others.
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The will of the nation is one of those phrases most widely abused by schemers and tyrants of all ages.
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Freedom sees in religion the companion of its struggles and its triumphs, the cradle of its infancy, the divine source of its rights. It considers religion as the safeguard of mores and mores as the guarantee of laws and the pledge of its duration.
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Those that despise people will never get the best out of others and themselves.
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The most dangerous moment for a bad government is when it begins to reform.
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The legislator is like the navigator of a ship on the high seas. He can steer the vessel on which he sails, but he cannot alter its construction, raise the wind, or stop the waves from swelling beneath his feet.
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All around you everything is on the move.
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European Christianity has allowed itself to be intimately united with the powers of this world. Now that these powers are falling, it is as if it were buried under their ruins.
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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.
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I cannot help fearing that men may reach a point where they look on every new theory as a danger, every innovation as a toilsome trouble, every social advance as a first step toward revolution, and that they may absolutely refuse to move at all.
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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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Nothing is more annoying in the ordinary intercourse of life than this irritable patriotism of the Americans. A foreigner will gladly agree to praise much in their country, but he would like to be allowed to criticize something, and that he is absolutely refused.
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The aspect of American society is animated, because men and things are always changing but it is monotonous, because all the changes are alike.
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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.
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It is easier for the world to accept a simple lie than a complex truth.
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Remember that life is neither pain nor pleasure it is serious business, to be entered upon with courage and in a spirit of self-sacrifice.
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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.
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When the people rule, they must be rendered happy, or they will overturn the state.
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America is a land of wonders, in which everything is in constant motion and every change seems an improvement.
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