Alexis de Tocqueville Quotes

We succeed in enterprises which demand the positive qualities we possess, but we excel in those which can also make use of our defects.

There is, in fact, a manly and lawful passion for equality which excites men to wish all to be powerful and honored. This passion tends to elevate the humble to the rank of the great; but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to […]

When inequality is the general rule in society, the greatest inequalities attract no attention. When everything is more or less level, the slightest variation is noticed. Hence the more equal men are, the more insatiable will be their longing for equality.

The Indian knew how to live without wants, to suffer without complaint, and to die singing.

History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.

The health of a democratic society may be measured by the quality of functions performed by private citizens.

Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference. While democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.

I think, then, that the species of oppression by which democratic nations are menaced is unlike anything that ever before existed in the world; our contemporaries will find no prototype of it in their memories. I seek in vain for an expression that will accurately convey the whole of the idea I have formed of […]

The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.

Here and there in the midst of American society you meet with men full of a fanatical and almost wild spiritualism, which hardly exists in Europe. From time to time strange sects arise which endeavor to strike out extraordinary paths to eternal happiness. Religious insanity is very common in the United States.