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Democracy in America quotes

Alexis de Tocqueville

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“The happy and the powerful do not go into exile, and there are no surer guarantees of equality among men than poverty and misfortune.” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
“When the American republics begin to degenerate it will be easy to verify the truth of this observation, by remarking whether the number of political impeachments augments.” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
“Men will not accept truth at the hands of their enemies, and truth is seldom offered to them by their friends: for this reason I have spoken it.” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
“All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and the shortest means to accomplish it.” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
“The doctrine of interest rightly understood is not, then, new, but amongst the Americans of our time it finds universal acceptance: it has become popular there; you may trace it at the bottom of all their actions, you will remark it in all they say.” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
“I know no country in which there is so little true independence of mind and freedom of discussion as in America.” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
“Society is endangered not by the great profligacy of a few, but by laxity of morals amongst all.” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
“Men are not corrupted by the exercise of power or debased by the habit of obedience, but by the exercise of a power which they believe to be illegal and by obedience to a rule which they consider to be usurped and oppressive.” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
“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.” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
“No natural boundary seems to be set to the efforts of man; and what is not yet done is only what he has not yet attempted to do.” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
“The whole life of an American is passed like a game of chance, a revolutionary crisis, or a battle.” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
“Scarcely any question arises in the United States which does not become, sooner or later, a subject of judicial debate; hence all parties are obliged to borrow the ideas, and even the language, usual in judicial proceedings in their daily...” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
“Democratic institutions generally give men a lofty notion of their country and of themselves.” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
“The most durable monument of human labor is that which recalls the wretchedness and nothingness of man.” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
“America is a land of wonders, in which everything is in constant motion, and every movement seems an improvement.” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
“the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot...” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
“The French codes are often difficult of comprehension, but they can be read by every one; nothing, on the other hand, can be more impenetrable to the uninitiated than a legislation founded upon precedents.” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
“When the taste for physical gratifications amongst such a people has grown more rapidly than their education and their experience of free institutions, the time will come when men are carried away, and lose all self-restraint, at the sight of the...” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
“There are two things which a democratic people will always find very difficult—to begin a war, and to end it.” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
“No protracted war can fail to endanger the freedom of a democratic country.” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
“For my own part, I should be inclined to think freedom less necessary in great things than in little ones, if it were possible to be secure of the one without possessing the other.” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
“liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
“Men seldom take the opinion of their equal, or of a man like themselves, upon trust.” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
“Despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot.” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
“unbelief is an accident, and faith is the only permanent state of mankind.” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
“a nation cannot long remain strong when every man belonging to it is individually weak” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
“religion, and not fear, has ever been the cause of the long-lived prosperity of an absolute government.” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
“To mimic virtue is of every age; but the hypocrisy of luxury belongs more particularly to the ages of democracy.” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
“One of the most ordinary weaknesses of the human intellect is to seek to reconcile contrary principles, and to purchase peace at the expense of logic.” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
“When I refuse to obey an unjust law, I do not contest the right which the majority has of commanding, but I simply appeal from the sovereignty of the people to the sovereignty of mankind.” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
“Thus the principle of equality does not destroy the imagination, but lowers its flight to the level of the earth.” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
“Nothing is more necessary to the culture of the higher sciences, or of the more elevated departments of science, than meditation; and nothing is less suited to meditation than the structure of democratic society.” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
“This patriotism is sometimes stimulated by religious enthusiasm, and then it is capable of making the most prodigious efforts. It is in itself a kind of religion; it does not reason, but it acts from the impulse of faith and of sentiment.” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
“In the United States each separate journal exercises but little authority, but the power of the periodical press is only second to that of the people.” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
“Slavery, as we shall afterwards show, dishonors labor; it introduces idleness into society, and with idleness, ignorance and pride, luxury and distress. It enervates the powers of the mind, and benumbs the activity of man.” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
“In America the majority raises very formidable barriers to the liberty of opinion: within these barriers an author may write whatever he pleases, but he will repent it if he ever step beyond them.” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
“At the present time, an oppressed member of the community has therefore only one method of self-defence—he may appeal to the whole nation; and if the whole nation is deaf to his complaint, he may appeal to mankind: the only means he has of...” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
“Most of these parties censure the conduct of the government, but they all hold that the government ought perpetually to act and interfere in everything that is done.” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
“A proposition must be plain to be adopted by the understanding of a people. A false notion which is clear and precise will always meet with a greater number of adherents in the world than a true principle which is obscure or involved.” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
“For the principle of equality begets two tendencies; the one leads men straight to independence, and may suddenly drive them into anarchy; the other conducts them by a longer, more secret, but more certain road, to servitude.” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

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America democracy freedom faith hypocrisy government war liberty oppression independence power equality obedience morality despotism nation truth opinion mankind limit

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