Quotes About Society

Democratic institutions strongly tend to promote the feeling of envy.

What one must fear, moreover, is not so much the sight of the immorality of the great as that of immorality leading to greatness.

Amongst civilized nations revolts are rarely excited, except by such persons as have nothing to lose by them;

No form or combination of social polity has yet been devised to make an energetic people out of a community of pusillanimous and enfeebled citizens.

But a people, having taken its rise in civilization and democracy, which should gradually establish an inequality of conditions, until it arrived at inviolable privileges and exclusive castes, would be a novelty in the world; and nothing intimates that America is likely to furnish so singular an example.

Nothing is more repugnant to the human mind in an age of equality than the idea of subjection to forms.

I have heard of patriotism in the United States, and it is a virtue which may be found among the people, but never among the leaders of the people.

It had been supposed, until our time, that despotism was odious, under whatever form it appeared. But it is a discovery of modern days that there are such things as legitimate tyranny and holy injustice, provided they are exercised in the name of the people.

Despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot.

Whether democracy or aristocracy is the better form of government constitutes a very difficult question. But, clearly, democracy inconveniences one person while aristocracy oppresses another. That is a truth which establishes itself and precludes any discussion: you are rich and I am poor.

Laws are always unstable unless they are founded upon the manners of the nation; manners are the only durable and resisting power in a people.

The American learns about the law by participating in the making of it. He teaches himself about the forms of government by governing. He watches the great work of society being done every day before his eyes and, in a sense, by his hand. In the United States, all of education is directed toward politics. In Europe, its principal purpose is to prepare people for private life. Citizens take part in public affairs too seldom to prepare them for it in advance.

Consequently, in the United States the law favors those classes which are most interested in evading it elsewhere.

There are people in Europe who, confounding together the different characteristics of the sexes, would make of man and woman beings not only equal but alike. They would give to both the same functions, impose on both the same duties, and grant to both the same rights; they would mix them in all things—their occupations, their pleasures, their business.

I have already expressed the conviction which I entertain as to the latter event. *r I do not imagine that the white and black races will ever live in any country upon an equal footing. But I believe the difficulty to be still greater in the United States than elsewhere.

To mimic virtue is of every age; but the hypocrisy of luxury belongs more particularly to the ages of democracy.

The Americans live in a democratic state of society, which has naturally suggested to them certain laws and a certain political character. This

It must never be forgotten that religion gave birth to Anglo-American society.

I observed that equality of condition, though it has not there reached the extreme limit which it seems to have attained in the United States, is constantly approaching it; and that the democracy which governs the American communities appears to be rapidly rising into power in Europe.

In the States of New England, from the first, the condition of the poor was provided for;

Os costumes, cuja excelência torna o governo quase inútil e cuja corrupção o torna quase impossível.

Democratic institutions awaken and foster a passion for equality which they can never entirely satisfy. This complete equality eludes the grasp of the people at the very moment they think they have grasped it . . . the people are excited in the pursuit of an advantage, which is more precious because it is not sufficiently remote to be unknown or sufficiently near to be enjoyed.

The passion for physical comforts is essentially a passion of the middle classes: with those classes it grows and spreads, with them it preponderates.

People think that the destructive theories that nowadays go by the name "socialism" are of recent origin. This is a mistake: these theories were contemporaneous with the first Economists. While they employed the all-powerful government of their dreams as an instrument to change the forms of society, socialists imagined seizing the same power to undermine its base.