Quotes of Alexis De Tocqueville - somelinesforyou

“ The people reign over the American political world as God rules over the universe. It is the cause and the end of all things; everything rises out of it and is absorbed back into it. ”

- Alexis De Tocqueville

“ There is hardly a political question in the United States which doesn't sooner or later turn into a judicial one. ”

- Alexis De Tocqueville

“ Life is to entered upon with courage. ”

- Alexis De Tocqueville

“ It is easier for the world to accept a simple lie than a complex truth. ”

- Alexis De Tocqueville

“ History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies. ”

- Alexis De Tocqueville

“ History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies. ”

- Alexis De Tocqueville

“ I am unaware of his plans but I shall never stop believing in them because I cannot fathom them and I prefer to mistrust my own intellectual capacities than his justice. ”

- Alexis De Tocqueville

“ Men will not accept truth at the hands of their enemies, and truth is seldom offered to them by their friends ”

- Alexis De Tocqueville

“ I have only to contemplate myself; man comes from nothing, passes through time, and disappears forever in the bosom of God. He is seen but for a moment wandering on the verge of two abysses, and then is lost. If man were wholly ignorant of himself he would have no poetry in him, for one cannot describe what one does not conceive. If he saw himself clearly, his imagination would remain idle and would have nothing to add to the picture. But the nature of man is sufficiently revealed for him to know something of himself and sufficiently veiled to leave much impenetrable darkness, a darkness in which he ever gropes, forever in vain, trying to understand himself. ”

- Alexis De Tocqueville

“ Aristocracy naturally leads the human mind to the contemplation of the past, and fixes it there. Democracy, on the contrary, gives men a sort of instinctive distaste for what is ancient. In this respect aristocracy is far more favorable to poetry; for things commonly grow larger and more obscure as they are more remote; and, for this twofold reason, they are better suited to the delineation of the ideal. ”

- Alexis De Tocqueville

“ Amongst democratic nations men easily attain a certain equality of conditions: they can never attain the equality they desire. It perpetually retires from before them, yet without hiding itself from their sight, and in retiring draws them on. At every moment they think they are about to grasp it; it escapes at every moment from their hold. They are near enough to see its charms, but too far off to enjoy them; and before they have fully tasted its delights they die. ”

- Alexis De Tocqueville

“ The short space of threescore years can never content the imagination of man; nor can the imperfect joys of this world satisfy his heart. Man alone, of all created beings, displays a natural contempt of existence, and yet a boundless desire to exist; he scorns life, but he dreads annihilation. These different feelings incessantly urged his soul to the contemplation of a future state, and religion directs his musings thither. Religion, then, is simply another form of hope; and it is no less natural to the human heart than hope itself. ”

- Alexis De Tocqueville

“ The religionists are the enemies of liberty, and the friends of liberty attack religion; the highminded and the noble advocate bondage, and the meanest and most servile preach independence; honest and enlightened citizens are opposed to all progress, whilst men without patriotism and without principle put themselves forward as the apostles of civilization and intelligence. Has such been the fate of the centuries which have preceded our own? and has man always inhabited a world like the present, where all things are out of their natural connections, where virtue is without genius, and genius without honor; where the love of order is confounded with a taste for oppression, and the holy rites of freedom with a contempt of law; where the light thrown by conscience on human actions is dim, and where nothing seems to be any longer forbidden or allowed, honorable or shameful, false or true? ”

- Alexis De Tocqueville

“ On close inspection, we shall find that religion, and not fear, has ever been the cause of the longlived prosperity of an absolute government. ”

- Alexis De Tocqueville

“ Nations, as well as men, almost always betray the most prominent features of their future destiny in their earliest years. ”

- Alexis De Tocqueville

“ I follow the course marked out by my principles and, what is more, enjoy a deep and noble pleasure in following it. You deeply despise the human race, at least our part of it; you think it not only fallen but incapable of ever rising again... For my part, as I feel neither the right nor the wish to entertain such opinions of my species and my country, I think it is not necessary to despair of them. In my opinion, human societies, like individuals, amount to something only in liberty...And God forbid that my mind should ever be crossed by the thought that it is necessary to despair of success... You will allow me to have less confidence in your teaching than in the goodness and justice of God. ”

- Alexis De Tocqueville

“ Nations, as well as men, almost always betray the most prominent features of their future destiny in their earliest years. ”

- Alexis De Tocqueville

“ I follow the course marked out by my principles and, what is more, enjoy a deep and noble pleasure in following it. You deeply despise the human race, at least our part of it; you think it not only fallen but incapable of ever rising again... For my part, as I feel neither the right nor the wish to entertain such opinions of my species and my country, I think it is not necessary to despair of them. In my opinion, human societies, like individuals, amount to something only in liberty...And God forbid that my mind should ever be crossed by the thought that it is necessary to despair of success... You will allow me to have less confidence in your teaching than in the goodness and justice of God. ”

- Alexis De Tocqueville

“ 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. ”

- Alexis De Tocqueville

“ In America a woman loses her independence for ever in the bonds of matrimony. While there is less constraint on girls there than anywhere else, a wife submits to stricter obligations. For the former, her father's house is a home of freedom and pleasure; for the latter, her husband's is almost a cloister. ”

- Alexis De Tocqueville

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

- Alexis De Tocqueville

“ The most dangerous moment for a bad government is when it begins to reform. ”

- Alexis De Tocqueville

“ The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democratic paint, but from time to time one can see the old aristocratic colours breaking through. ”

- Alexis De Tocqueville

“ There are two things which will always be very difficult for a democratic nation: to start a war and to end it. ”

- Alexis De Tocqueville

“ There are two things which will always be very difficult for a democratic nation: to start a war and to end it. ”

- Alexis De Tocqueville

“ Consider any individual at any period of his life, and you will always find him preoccupied with fresh plans to increase his comfort. ”

- Alexis De Tocqueville

“ In America the majority raises formidable barriers around the liberty of opinion; within these barriers an author may write what he pleases, but woe to him if he goes beyond them. ”

- Alexis De Tocqueville

“ In America the majority raises formidable barriers around the liberty of opinion; within these barriers an author may write what he pleases, but woe to him if he goes beyond them. ”

- Alexis De Tocqueville

“ Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom. ”

- Alexis De Tocqueville

“ Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude. ”

- Alexis De Tocqueville
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