Quotes from Alexis de Tocqueville

In a revolution, as in a novel, the most difficult part to invent is the end.

When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness.

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.

There are two things which a democratic people will always find very difficult - to begin a war and to end it.

It must not be forgotten that it is especially dangerous to enslave men in the minor details of life.

By obliging men to turn their attention to other affairs than their own, it rubs off that private selfishness which is the rust of society.

Democratic institutions generally give men a lofty notion of their country and themselves.

No men are less addicted to reverie than the citizens of a democracy.

The aspect of American society is animated, because men and things are always changing; but it is monotonous, because all the changes are alike.

Nature secretly avenges herself for the constraint imposed upon her by the laws of man.

Men living in democratic times have many passions, but most of their passions either end in the love of riches, or proceed from it.

The most durable monument of human labor is that which recalls the wretchedness and nothingness of man.

What chiefly diverts the men of democracies from lofty ambition is not the scantiness of their fortunes, but the vehemence of the exertions they daily make to improve them.

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

There is hardly a political question in the United States which does not sooner or later turn into a judicial one.

No protracted war can fail to endanger the freedom of a democratic country.

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.

Socialism is a new form of slavery.

In politics a community of hatred is almost always the foundation of friendships.

I have always noticed in politics how often men are ruined by having too good a memory.

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

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.

When an American asks for the cooperation of his fellow citizens, it is seldom refused; and I have often seen it afforded spontaneously and with great good will.

When none but the wealthy had watches, they were almost all very good ones; few are now made which are worth much, but everybody has one in his pocket.