The Old Regime and the Revolution Quotes

“One sees that history is an art gallery where there are few originals and many copies.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the Revolution

“He who seeks freedom for anything but freedom's self is made to be a slave.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the Revolution

“The French constitute the most brilliant and the most dangerous nation in Europe and the best qualified in turn to become an object of admiration, hatred, pity or terror but never indifference.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the Revolution

“The French are … the most brilliant and the most dangerous nation of Europe, and the one that is surest to inspire admiration, hatred, terror, or pity, but never indifference.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the Revolution

“A man's support for absolute government is in direct proportion to the contempt he feels for his country.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the Revolution

“Even despots accept the excellence of liberty. The simple truth is that they wish to keep it for themselves and promote the idea that no one else is at all worthy of it.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the Revolution

“It is only with great difficulty that the upper classes ever manage to see clearly what is going on in the soul of the masses...Education and lifestyle put things in a perspective which is particular to the rich and which remains closed to all others. But once the poor man and the rich man no longer have almost any interests in common, no common grievances, nor common business, the shadows which hide the mind of the one from the other become impenetrable, and these two men could live side by side forever, without ever knowing each other.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the Revolution

“Every year, therefore, the inequality of taxation separated classes and isolated individuals more deeply than ever before. From the moment when taxation had as its purpose, not to strike those most capable of paying, but those least capable of defending themselves against it, the monstrous consequence of sparing the rich and burdening the poor was inevitable.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the Revolution

“An individual so different from all the others, so independent, so favored, destroys or weakens the rule of law.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the Revolution

“They were prepared for everything except what actually happened.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the Revolution

“Never was such a great event, with such ancient causes, so well prepared and so little foreseen.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the Revolution

“Democratic societies that are not free can be wealthy, refined, even splendid, powerful because of the weight of their homogeneous mass; one can find there private virtues, good family men, honest merchants, and very worthy squires; one will even see some good Christians...But what will never exist in such societies are great citizens, and above all a great people, and I am willing to state that the average level of hearts and minds will never cease to decline as long as equality and despotism are combined.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the Revolution

“People today, no longer attached to one another by any ties of caste, class, guild or family, are all too inclined to be preoccupied with their own private interests, too given to looking out for themselves alone and withdrawing into a narrow individualism where all public virtues are smothered. Despotism, rather than struggle against this tendency, makes it irresistible, because it takes away from citizens all common feeling, all common needs, all need for communication, all occasion for common action. It walls them up inside their private lives. They already tend to keep themselves apart from one another: despotism isolates them; it chills their relations; it freezes them.
In these kinds of societies, where nothing is fixed, everyone is constantly tormented by the fear of falling and by the ambition to rise...The desire to enrich oneself at any price, the preference for business, the love of profit, the search for material pleasure and comfort are therefore the most widespread desires. These desires spread easily among all classes, even among those previously most distant from them, and if nothing stops theme they soon succeed in demoralizing and degrading the entire nation. But it is the very essence of despotism to favor and extend them. These debilitating passions help despotism, they occupy men’s minds and turn them away from public affairs, while making them tremble at the very idea of revolution. Despotism alone can furnish these passions with the secrecy and shadow which make greed feel at home, and let it reap its dishonest profits despite dishonor. Without despotism these passions would have been strong, with it they are all-powerful.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the Revolution

“The old nobility was the most irreligious class of society before 1789, and the most pious after 1793 ...”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the Revolution