Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocquevillewas a French diplomat, political scientist, and historian. He was best known for his works Democracy in Americaand The Old Regime and the Revolution. In both he analyzed the improved living standards and social conditions of individuals, as well as their relationship to the market and state in Western societies. Democracy in America was published after Tocqueville's travels in the United States, and is today considered an early work of sociology and political science...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionHistorian
Date of Birth29 July 1805
CountryFrance
turn against themselves and consider their hopes as having been childish--their enthusiasm and, above all, their devotion absurd.
History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies
The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money.
I do not know if the people of the United States would vote for superior men if they ran for office, but there can be no doubt that such men do not run.
I should have loved freedom, I believe, at all times, but in the time in which we live I am ready to worship it.
What is the 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.
There are two things which a democratic people will always find very difficult - to begin a war and to end it.
The will of the nation' is one of those expressions which have been most profusely abused by the wily and the despotic of every age
The will of the nation is one of those phrases most widely abused by schemers and tyrants of all ages.
I am far from denying that newspapers in democratic countries lead citizens to do very ill-considered things in common; but without newspapers there would be hardly any common action at all. So they mend many more ills than they cause.
In towns it is impossible to prevent men from assembling, getting excited together and forming sudden passionate resolves. Towns are like great meeting houses with all the inhabitants as members. In them the people wield immense influence over their magistrates and often carry their desires into execution without intermediaries.
I have seen Americans making great and sincere sacrifices for the key common good and a hundred times I have noticed that, when needs be, they almost always gave each other faithful support
Of all the countries of the world America is the one where the movement of thought and human industry is the most continuous and swift.
It is an axiom of political science in the United States that the sole means of neutralizing the effects of newspapers is to multiply their number.