Quotes About Progress

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.

What frightens me most is the danger that, amid all the constant trivial preoccupations of private life, ambition may lose both its force and its greatness, that human passions may grow gentler and at the same time baser, with the result that the progress of the body social may become daily quieter and less aspiring.

When the English adopted the institution of the jury, they were a half-barbaric people; they have since become one of the most enlightened nations of the globe, and their attachment to the jury has seemed to increase with their enlightenment.

Nations as well as men require time to learn, whatever may be their intelligence or zeal.

The great privilege of the Americans does not simply consist in their being more enlightened than other nations, but in their being able to repair the faults they may commit.

the invention of fire-arms equalized the villein and the noble on the field of battle; printing opened the same resources to the minds of all classes;

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.

When both privileges and the disqualifications of class have been abolished and men have shattered the bonds which once held them immobile, the idea of progress comes naturally into each man's mind; the desire to rise swells in every heart at one, and all men want to quit their former social position. Ambition becomes a universal feeling.

And now, As I come near the end of this book in which I have recorded so many considerable achievements of the Americans, if I am asked how we should account for the unusual prosperity and growing strength of this nation, I would reply that they must be attributed to the superiority of their woman.

The American lives in a land of wonders, in which everything seems to be in constant flux, and every change seems to mark an advance. Hence the idea of the new is coupled in his mind with the idea of the better. Nowhere does he perceive the limits that nature may have imposed on man's efforts. In his eyes, that which does not exist is that which has not yet been attempted.

We have not to seek to make ourselves like our progenitors, but to strive to work out that species of greatness and happiness which is our own.

While the natural instincts of democracy persuade the people to remove distinguished men from power, the latter are guided by no less an instinct to distance themselves from a political career, where it is so difficult for them to retain their complete autonomy or to make any progress without cheapening themselves.

Equality sets men apart and weakens them; but the press places a powerful weapon within every man's reach, which the weakest and loneliest of them all may use. Equality deprives a man of the support of his connections; but the press enables him to summon all his fellow-countrymen and all his fellow-men to his assistance. Printing has accelerated the progress of equality, and it is also one of its best correctives.

It appears to me beyond doubt that sooner or later we shall arrive, like the Americans, at an almost complete equality of conditions.

Democracy shuts the past against the poet, but opens the future before him.

Whatever one does, it is impossible to raise the intelligence of a nation above a certain level. It will be quite useless to ease the access to human knowledge, improve teaching methods, or reduce the cost of education, for men will never become educated nor develop their intelligence without devoting time to the matter... Thus it is as difficult to imagine a society where all men are enlightened as a state where all the citizens are wealthy.

The great advantage of the Americans is, that they have arrived at a state of democracy without having to endure a democratic revolution; and that they are born equal, instead of becoming so.

Although man resembles the animals in several respects, one feature is peculiar to him alone: he perfects himself and they do not.

the great advantage of the Americans consists in their being able to commit faults which they may afterward repair.

Looking back century by century to remotest Antiquity, I see nothing that resembles what I see before me.

Are ruins, then, already here?

Rather, he accepted democracy as an objective fact and wanted to address positive and negative lessons the French people could learn from the American example. He wrote, "I sought there the image of democracy itself, with its inclinations, its character, its prejudices, and its passions, in order to learn what we have to fear or to hope from its progress."5

America the only country in which the starting-point of a great people has been clearly observable

We should not strive to resemble our fathers but should strain to achieve a type of greatness and happiness which belongs to us alone.