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
He was as great as a man can be without morality.
The best laws cannot make a constitution work in spite of morals; morals can turn the worst laws to advantage. That is a commonplace truth, but one to which my studies are always bringing me back. It is the central point in my conception. I see it at the end of all my reflections.
Society is endangered not by the great profligacy of a few, but by the laxity of morals amongst all.
Rulers who destroy men's freedom commonly begin by trying to retain its forms. ... They cherish the illusion that they can combine the prerogatives of absolute power with the moral authority that comes from popular assent.
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.
turn against themselves and consider their hopes as having been childish--their enthusiasm and, above all, their devotion absurd.
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.