Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–59,) fully Alexis Charles Henri Maurice Clérel de Tocqueville, was a French diplomat, sociologist, political philosopher, and historian. He profoundly shaped debates about liberalism and equality in the nineteenth century, mainly through his study of American democracy. Tocqueville was rediscovered in the twentieth century as a prophetic critic of state power, and he remains one of the leading influences on democratic theory.
Born in an aristocratic family in Paris, he was called to the Bar in 1825 and became an assistant-magistrate at Versailles. In 1831, he was sent by the French government to the USA to report on the penal system, and on his return published a sweeping study of U.S. political and social institutions, De la démocratie en Amerique (1835–40, 4 vols.; Democracy in America.) The book immediately found a broad readership and became one of the most influential political writings of the 19th century. It remains one of the excellent European commentaries on U.S. politics and society.
Tocqueville became a member of the Chamber of Deputies (1839,) and, in 1849, was vice-president of the Assembly, and briefly Minister of Foreign Affairs.
After Napoleon III’s coup d’état, Tocqueville retired to his estate, where he wrote the first volume of L’Ancien Régime et la Révolution (1856; The Old Regime and the Revolution,) but he died before another volume could be completed.
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As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: how much money will it bring in?
—Alexis de Tocqueville
Topics: Profit
In some countries a power exists which, though it is in a degree foreign to the social body, directs it, and forces it to pursue a certain track. In others the ruling force is divided, being partly within and partly without the ranks of the people. But nothing of the kind is to be seen in the United States; there society governs itself for itself. All power centers in its bosom, and scarcely an individual is to be met with who would venture to conceive or, still less, to express the idea of seeking it elsewhere. The nation participates in the making of its laws by the choice of its legislators, and in the execution of them by the choice of the agents of the executive government; it may almost be said to govern itself, so feeble and so restricted is the share left to the administration, so little . do the authorities forget their popular origin and the power from which they emanate. The people reign in the American political world as the Deity does in the universe. They are the cause and the aim of all things; everything comes from them, and everything is absorbed in them.
—Alexis de Tocqueville
Topics: Power
What is 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 they do not form a class.
—Alexis de Tocqueville
Topics: Wealth
The progress of democracy seems irresistible, because it is the most uniform, the most ancient, and the most permanent tendency which is to be found in history.
—Alexis de Tocqueville
Topics: Democracy
There is no philosopher in the world so great but he believes a million things on the faith of other people and accepts a great many more truths than he demonstrates.
—Alexis de Tocqueville
Topics: Truth
Laws are always unstable unless they are founded on the manners of a nation; and manners are the only durable and resisting power in a people.
—Alexis de Tocqueville
Topics: Law, Manners
I am obliged to confess that I do not regard the abolition of slavery as a means of warding off the struggle of the two races in the Southern states. The Negroes may long remain slaves without complaining; but if they are once raised to the level of freemen, they will soon revolt at being deprived of almost all their civil rights; and as they cannot become the equals of the whites, they will speedily show themselves as enemies.
—Alexis de Tocqueville
Topics: Race, Racism
In countries where associations are free, secret societies are unknown. In America there are factions, but no conspiracies.
—Alexis de Tocqueville
There is no country in the world in which everything can be provided for by the laws, or in which political institutions can prove a substitute for common sense and public morality.
—Alexis de Tocqueville
Topics: Law
The main business of religions is to purify, control, and restrain that excessive and exclusive taste for well-being which men acquire in times of equality.
—Alexis de Tocqueville
Topics: Religion
Despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot. How is it possible that society should escape destruction if the moral tie is not strengthened in proportion as the political tie is relaxed? And what can be done with a people who are their own masters if they are not submissive to the Deity?
—Alexis de Tocqueville
Topics: Faith
The man who submits to violence is debased by his compliance; but when he submits to that right of authority which he acknowledges in a fellow creature, he rises in some measure above the person who give the command.
—Alexis de Tocqueville
Topics: Authority
When an opinion has taken root in a democracy and established itself in the minds of the majority, if afterward persists by itself, needing no effort to maintain it since no one attacks it. Those who at first rejected it as false come in the end to adopt it as accepted, and even those who still at the bottom of their hearts oppose it keep their views to themselves, taking great care to avoid a dangerous and futile contest.
—Alexis de Tocqueville
Topics: Religion
In a revolution, as in a novel, the most difficult part to invent is the end.
—Alexis de Tocqueville
Topics: Revolutions, Revolution, Revolutionaries
Two things in America are astonishing: the changeableness of most human behavior and the strange stability of certain principles. Men are constantly on the move, but the spirit of humanity seems almost unmoved.
—Alexis de Tocqueville
Topics: America
The Americans combine the notions of religion and liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive of one without the other
—Alexis de Tocqueville
Topics: Liberty
We succeed in enterprises which demand the positive qualities we possess, but we excel in those which can also make use of our defects.
—Alexis de Tocqueville
Topics: Abilities, Work, Aptness, Talents, Self-Knowledge, Appropriateness, Excellence, Success
It is from the midst of this putrid sewer that the greatest river of human industry springs up and carries fertility to the whole world. From this foul drain pure gold flows forth. .
—Alexis de Tocqueville
Nothing is quite so wretchedly corrupt as an aristocracy which has lost its power but kept its wealth and which still has endless leisure to devote to nothing but banal enjoyments. All its great thoughts and passionate energy are things of the past, and nothing but a host of petty, gnawing vices now cling to it like worms to a corpse.
—Alexis de Tocqueville
Topics: Aristocracy
Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith.
—Alexis de Tocqueville
Topics: Morality
Grant me thirty years of equal division of inheritances and a free press, and I will provide you with a republic.
—Alexis de Tocqueville
Topics: Government
In politics… shared hatreds are almost always the basis of friendships.
—Alexis de Tocqueville
Topics: Politicians, Politics
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
Topics: War
In democracies, nothing is more great or more brilliant than commerce: It attracts the attention of the public and fills the imagination of the multitude; all energetic passions are directed towards it.
—Alexis de Tocqueville
Topics: Business, Action
The Indian knew how to live without wants, to suffer without complaint, and to die singing
—Alexis de Tocqueville
Topics: Singing
To commit violent and unjust acts, it is not enough for a government to have the will or even the power; the habits, ideas and passions of the time must lend themselves to their committal.
—Alexis de Tocqueville
Topics: Government
From the time when the exercise of the intellect became the source of strength and wealth, every addition to science, every fresh truth, and every new idea became a germ of power placed within reach of the people.
—Alexis de Tocqueville
Topics: People
An American cannot converse, but he can discuss, and his talk falls into a dissertation. He speaks to you as if he was addressing a meeting; and if he should chance to become warm in the discussion, he will say “Gentlemen” to the person with whom he is conversing.
—Alexis de Tocqueville
Topics: Conversation
By and large the literature of a democracy will never exhibit the order, regularity, skill, and art characteristic of aristocratic literature; formal qualities will be neglected or actually despised. The style will often be strange, incorrect, overburdened, and loose, and almost always strong and bold. Writers will be more anxious to work quickly than to perfect details. Short works will be commoner than long books, wit than erudition, imagination than depth. There will be a rude and untutored vigor of thought with great variety and singular fecundity. Authors will strive to astonish more than to please, and to stir passions rather than to charm taste.
—Alexis de Tocqueville
Topics: Books, Literature
Christianity is the companion of liberty in all its conflicts—the cradle of its infancy, and the divine source of its claims.
—Alexis de Tocqueville
Topics: Liberty, Christianity
Those that despise people will never get the best out of others and themselves.
—Alexis de Tocqueville
Topics: Management
It is almost never when a state of things is the most detestable that it is smashed, but when, beginning to improve, it permits men to breathe, to reflect, to communicate their thoughts with each other, and to gauge by what they already have the extent of their rights and their grievances. The weight, although less heavy, seems then all the more unbearable.
—Alexis de Tocqueville
Topics: Revolutions, Revolution, Revolutionaries
It is a great blessing, says Pascal: “to be born a man of quality, since it brings a man as far forward at eighteen or twenty as another would be at fifty, which is a clear gain of thirty years.”—These thirty years are commonly wanting to the ambitious characters of democracies.—The principle of equality, which allows every man to arrive at everything, prevents all men from rapid advancement.
—Alexis de Tocqueville
Topics: Democracy
It is impossible to destroy men with more respect for the laws of humanity.
—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
Topics: Equality
After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp, and fashioned them at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided: men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting: such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.
—Alexis de Tocqueville
Calvinism is a democratic and republican religion.
—Alexis de Tocqueville
Chance does nothing that has not been prepared beforehand.
—Alexis de Tocqueville
Topics: Fortune, Chance, Luck
In order to civilize a people, it is necessary first to fix it, and this cannot be done without inducing it to cultivate the soil.
—Alexis de Tocqueville
Topics: Civilization
When the political power of the clergy was founded and began to exert itself, and they opened their ranks to all classes, to the poor and the rich, the villain and the lord, equality penetrated into the government through the church and the being who as a serf must have vegetated in perpetual bondage, took his place, as a priest, in the midst of nobles, and not unfrequently above the head of kings.
—Alexis de Tocqueville
Topics: Equality
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