Quotes from Alexis de Tocqueville

The power of the periodical press is second only to that of the people.

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

In politics shared hatreds are almost always the basis of friendships.

In other words, a democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it.

The English or American lawyer investigates what was done, the French lawyer what was most likely intended. One wants decisions; the other, reasons.

The main business of religions is to purify, control, and restrain that excessive and exclusive taste for well-being which men acquire in times of equality.

He was as great as a man can be without morality.

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

Those that despise people will never get the best out of others and themselves.

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.

What is most important for democracy is not that great fortunes should not exist, but that great fortunes should not remain in the same hands. In that way there are rich men, but they do not form a class.

It is the dissimilarities and inequalities among men which give rise to the notion of honor as such differences become less, it grows feeble and when they disappear, it will vanish too.

There are at the present time two great nations in the world…. I allude to the Russians and the Americans…. Their starting-point is different and their courses are not the same; yet each of them seems marked out by the will of Heaven to sway the destinies of half the globe.

The American's principal means of action is liberty; the Russian's, servitude.Their points of departure are different, their ways diverse. Yet each seems called by a secret design of Providence some day to sway the destinies of half the globe.

In America, there are no noblemen or men of letters, and the people distrust the wealthy. Lawyers therefore constitute the superior political class and the most intellectual segment of society.

Various forms of religious madness are quite common in the United States.

The debates of that great assembly are frequently vague and perplexed, seeming to be dragged rather than to march, to the intended goal. Something of this sort must, I think, always happen in public democratic assemblies.

Democratic nations care but little for what has been, but they are haunted by visions of what will be; in this direction their unbounded imagination grows and dilates beyond all measure…. Democracy, which shuts the past against the poet, opens the future before him.

If an American was condemned to confine his activity to his own affairs, he would be robbed of one half of his existence.

Nothing seems at first sight less important than the outward form of human actions, yet there is nothing upon which men set more store: they grow used to everything except to living in a society which has not their own manners.

America is great because America is good. If America ever ceases to be good it will cease to be great.

An American cannot converse, but he can discuss, and his talk falls into a dissertation. He speaks to you as if he was addressing a meeting; and if he should chance to become warm in the discussion, he will say Gentlemen to the person with whom he is conversing.

Born often under another sky, placed in the middle of an always moving scene, himself driven by the irresistible torrent which draws all about him, the American has no time to tie himself to anything, he grows accustomed only to change, and ends by regarding it as the natural state of man. He feels the need of it, more he loves it; for the instability; instead of meaning disaster to him, seems to give birth only to miracles all about him.

Grant me thirty years of equal division of inheritances and a free press, and I will provide you with a republic.