Alexis De Tocqueville, Democracy In America Quotes

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.

Society is endangered not by the great profligacy of a few, but by the laxity of morals amongst all.

everybody feels the evil, but no one has courage or energy enough to seek the cure

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.

The happy and powerful do not go into exile, and there are no surer guarantees of equality among men than poverty and misfortune.

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.

[Patriotism] is in itself a kind of religion: it does not reason, but it acts from the impulse of faith and sentiment.

The only way to neutralize the effect of public journals is to multiply them indefinitely.

In the midst of the apparent diversity of human affairs, a certain number of primary facts may be discovered, from which all others are derived.

I had rather mistrust my own capacity than God's justice.

nothing, on the other hand, can be more impenetrable to the uninitiated than a legislation founded upon precedents.

Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry interests, in one word, so anti-poetic, as the life of a man in the United States.

Despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot.

Human understanding more easily invents new things than new words.

He who in given cases consents to obey his fellows with servility, and who submits his will, and even his thoughts, to their control, how can he pretend that he wishes to be free?

Slavery received, but the prejudice to which it has given birth remains stationary.

Durability is one of the chief elements of strength. Nothing is either loved or feared but that which is likely to endure.

In such an admirable position of the New World, man has no other enemy than himself.

What is called family pride is often founded on the illusion of self-love. A man wishes to perpetuate and immortalize himself.

Men will not accept truth at the hands of their enemies, and truth is seldom offered to them by their friends

The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democracy, from beneath which the old aristocratic colors sometimes peep.

There is a natural prejudice which prompts men to despise whomsoever has been their inferior long after he has become their equal.

Nations as well as men require time to learn, whatever may be their intelligence or zeal.

There is no country in the world in which everything can be provided for by laws, or in which political institutions can prove a substitute for common sense and public morality.

In America religion is the road to knowledge, and the observance of the divine laws leads man to civil freedom.

For benefits by their very greatness spotlight the difference in conditions and arouse a secret annoyance in those who profit from them. But the charm of simple good manners is almost irresistible.

The whole people contracts the habits and tastes of the magistrate.

When justice is more certain and more mild, is at the same time more efficacious.

A whole nation cannot rise above itself.

Nations, as well as men, almost always betray the most prominent features of their future destiny in their earliest years.