Democracy in America Quotes

“What is called family pride is often founded on the illusion of self-love. A man wishes to perpetuate and immortalize himself.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America: Volume 1

“men who so uneasily tolerate superiors patiently suffer a master, and show themselves proud and servile at the same time.”
― Tocqueville de, de la Démocratie en Amérique, tome 1

“patriotism and religion are the only two motives in the world which can permanently direct the whole of a body politic to one end.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America: Volume 1

“This demonstrated to me that those who regard universal suffrage as a guarantee for good choices are under a complete illusion. Universal suffrage has other advantages, but not that one.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America: Volume 1

“In reality it is far less prejudicial to witness the immorality of the great than to witness that immorality which leads to greatness.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America: Volume 1

“I am unacquainted with a more deplorable spectacle than that of a people unable either to defend or to maintain its independence.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America: Volume 1

“The lawyers of the United States form a party which is but little feared and scarcely perceived, which has no badge peculiar to itself, which adapts itself with great flexibility to the exigencies of the time, and accommodates itself to all the movements of the social body; but this party extends over the whole community, and it penetrates into all classes of society; it acts upon the country imperceptibly, but it finally fashions it to suit its purposes.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America: Volume 1

“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. Not that he is in danger of an auto-da-fe, but he is exposed to continued obloquy and persecution. His political career is closed forever since he has offended the only authority that is able to open it. Every sort of compensation, even that of celebrity, is refused to him. Before making public his opinions he thought he had sympathizers; now it seems to him that he has none any more since he revealed himself to everyone; then those who blame him criticize him loudly and those who think as he does keep quiet and move away without courage. He yields at length, over-come by the daily effort which he has to make, and subsides into silence, as if he felt remorse for speaking the truth.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America -; Volume 1

“Men are much more forcibly struck by those inequalities which exist within the circle of the same class, than with those which may be remarked between different classes. It is more easy for them to admit slavery, than to allow several millions of citizens to exist under a load of eternal infamy and hereditary wretchedness.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America: Volume 1

“But a democracy can only obtain truth as the result of experience, and many nations may forfeit their existence whilst they are awaiting the consequences of their errors.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America: Volume 1

“The pursuit of wealth generally diverts men of great talents and of great passions from the pursuit of power, and it very frequently happens that a man does not undertake to direct the fortune of the State until he has discovered his incompetence to conduct his own affairs.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America: Volume 1

“The taste for luxury, the love of war, the sway of fashion, and the most superficial as well as the deepest passions of the human heart, co-operated”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America - Volume 1

“In my opinion the main evil of the present democratic institutions of the United States does not arise, as is often asserted in Europe, from their weakness, but from their overpowering strength; and I am not so much alarmed at the excessive liberty which reigns in that country as at the very inadequate securities which exist against tyranny.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America: Volume 1

“Under its sway the transactions of the public administration are not nearly so important as what is done by private exertion. Democracy does not confer the most skilful kind of government upon the people, but it produces that which the most skilful governments are frequently unable to awaken, namely, an all-pervading and restless activity, a superabundant force, and an energy which is inseparable from it, and which may, under favorable circumstances, beget the most amazing benefits. These are the true advantages of democracy.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America: Volume 1

“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.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America: Volume 1

“Consequently, in the United States the law favors those classes which are most interested in evading it elsewhere.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America: Volume 1

“In other words, the government of the democracy is the only one under which the power which lays on taxes escapes the payment of them.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America: Volume 1

“If I were asked where I place the American aristocracy, I should reply without hesitation that it is not composed of the rich, who are united together by no common tie, but that it occupies the judicial bench and the bar.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America: Volume 1

“nothing, on the other hand, can be more impenetrable to the uninitiated than a legislation founded upon precedents.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America: Volume 1

“If man were forced to prove to himself all the truths he makes use of every day, he would never finish; he would exhaust himself in preliminary demonstrations without advancing; as he does not have the time because of the short span of life, nor the ability because of the limits of his mind, to act that way, he is reduced to accepting as given a host of facts and opinions that he has neither the leisure nor the power to examine and verify by himself, but that the more able have found or the crowd adopts. It is on this first foundation that he himself builds the edifice of his own thoughts. It is not his will that brings him to proceed in this manner; the inflexible law of his condition constrains him to do it.

There is no philosopher in the world so great that he does not believe a million things on faith in others or does not suppose many more truths than he establishes.

This is not only necessary, but desirable. A man who would undertake to examine everything by himself could accord but little time and attention to each thing; this work would keep his mind in a perpetual agitation that would prevent him from penetrating any truth deeply and from settling solidly on any certitude. His intellect would be at the same time independent and feeble. It is therefore necessary that he make a choice among the various objects of human opinions and that he adopt many beliefs without discussing them in order better to fathom a few he has reserved for examination.

It is true that every man who receives an opinion on the word of another puts his mind in slavery; but it is a salutary servitude that permits him to make good use of his freedom.

It is therefore always necessary, however it happens, that we encounter authority somewhere in the intellectual and moral world. Its place is variable, but it necessarily has a place. Individual independence can be more or less great; it cannot be boundless. Thus, the question is not that of knowing whether an intellectual authority exists in democratic centuries, but only where it is deposited and what its extent will be.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America: Translated by Henry Reeve, Esq. Vol. 1

“He had a strong conviction that no government could be ordained that could resist these internal forces, when, they are directed to its destruction by bad men, or unreasoning mobs, and many then believed, as some yet believe, that our government is unequal to such pressure, when the assault is thoroughly desperate.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America - Volume 1

“Has such been the fate of the centuries which have preceded our own? and has man always inhabited a world like the present, where nothing is linked together, 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, Democracy in America - Volume 1

“We must first understand what the purport of society and the aim of government is held to be. If it be your intention to confer a certain elevation upon the human mind, and to teach it to regard the things of this world with generous feelings, to inspire men with a scorn of mere temporal advantage, to give birth to living convictions, and to keep alive the spirit of honorable devotedness; if you hold it to be a good thing to refine the habits, to embellish the manners, to cultivate the arts of a nation, and to promote the love of poetry, of beauty, and of renown; if you would constitute a people not unfitted to act with power upon all other nations, nor unprepared for those high enterprises which, whatever be the result of its efforts, will leave a name forever famous in time—if you believe such to be the principal object of society, you must avoid the government of democracy, which would be a very uncertain guide to the end you have in view. But if you hold it to be expedient to divert the moral and intellectual activity of man to the production of comfort, and to the acquirement of the necessaries of life; if a clear understanding be more profitable to man than genius; if your object be not to stimulate the virtues of heroism, but to create habits of peace; if you had rather witness vices than crimes and are content to meet with fewer noble deeds, provided offences be diminished in the same proportion; if, instead of living in the midst of a brilliant state of society, you are contented to have prosperity around you; if, in short, you are of opinion that the principal object of a Government is not to confer the greatest possible share of power and of glory upon the body of the nation, but to ensure the greatest degree of enjoyment and the least degree of misery to each of the individuals who compose it—if such be your desires, you can have no surer means of satisfying them than by equalizing the conditions of men, and establishing democratic institutions.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America: Volume 1

“This point deserves attention, for if a democratic republic similar to that of the United States were ever founded in a country where the power of a single individual had previously subsisted, and the effects of a centralized administration had sunk deep into the habits and the laws of the people, I do not hesitate to assert, that in that country a more insufferable despotism would prevail than any which now exists in the monarchical States of Europe, or indeed than any which could be found on this side of the confines of Asia.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America: Volume 1

“All the domestic controversies of the Americans at first appear to a stranger to be so incomprehensible and so puerile that he is at a loss whether to pity a people which takes such arrant trifles in good earnest, or to envy the happiness which enables it to discuss them. But when he comes to study the secret propensities which govern the factions of America, he easily perceives that the greater part of them are more or less connected with one or the other of those two divisions which have always existed in free communities. The deeper we penetrate into the working of these parties, the more do we perceive that the object of the one is to limit, and that of the other to extend, the popular authority. I do not assert that the ostensible end, or even that the secret aim, of American parties is to promote the rule of aristocracy or democracy in the country; but I affirm that aristocratic or democratic passions may easily be detected at the bottom of all parties, and that, although they escape a superficial observation, they are the main point and the very soul of every faction in the United States.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America: Volume 1

“A long war almost always places nations in the wretched alternative of being abandoned to ruin by defeat or to despotism by success.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America: Volume 1

“When a legislator succeeds, after persevering efforts, in exercising an indirect influence upon the destiny of nations, his genius is lauded by mankind, whilst, in point of fact, the geographical position of the country which he is unable to change, a social condition which arose without his co-operation, manners and opinions which he cannot trace to their source, and an origin with which he is unacquainted, exercise so irresistible an influence over the courses of society that he is himself borne away by the current, after an ineffectual resistance. Like the navigator, he may direct the vessel which bears him along, but he can neither change its structure, nor raise the winds, nor lull the waters which swell beneath him.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America: Volume 1

“The arrogance of wealth and the dejection of wretchedness, capital cities of unwonted extent, a lax morality, a vulgar egotism, and a great confusion of interests, are the dangers which almost invariably arise from the magnitude of States.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America: Volume 1

“there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level, and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America - Volume 1

“The most dreadful of all the evils that threaten the future of the United States arises from the presence of blacks on its soil.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America: Volume 1