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.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Alexis de Tocqueville
By birth and interest lawyers belong to the people; by habit and taste to the aristocracy; and they may be looked upon as the natural bond and connecting link of the two great classes of society.—They are attached to public order beyond every other consideration, and the best security of public order is authority.—If they prize the free institutions of their country much, they value the legality of these institutions far more.—They are less afraid of tyranny than of arbitrary power.
—Alexis de Tocqueville
Topics: Lawyers
The debates of that great assembly are frequently vague and perplexed, seeming to be dragged rather than to march, to the intended goal. Something of this sort must, I think, always happen in public democratic assemblies.
—Alexis de Tocqueville
Trade is the natural enemy of all violent passions. Trade loves moderation, delights in compromise, and is most careful to avoid anger. It is patient, supple, and insinuating, only resorting to extreme measures in cases of absolute necessity. Trade makes men independent of one another and gives them a high idea of their personal importance: it leads them to want to manage their own affairs and teaches them to succeed therein. Hence it makes them inclined to liberty but disinclined to revolution.
—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 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
The first who attracts the eye, the first in enlightenment, in power and in happiness, is the white man, the European, man par excellence; below him appear the Negro and the Indian. These two unfortunate races have neither birth, nor face, nor language, nor mores in common; only their misfortunes look alike. Both occupy an equally inferior position in the country that they inhabit; both experience the effects of tyranny; and if their miseries are different, they can accuse the same author for them.
—Alexis de Tocqueville
Topics: Racism
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
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
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
Topics: Honor
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
The principle of equality does not destroy the imagination, but lowers its flight to the level of the earth.
—Alexis de Tocqueville
Topics: Equality
Amongst democratic nations, each generation is a new people.
—Alexis de Tocqueville
Topics: Generations
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
History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.
—Alexis de Tocqueville
The Indian knew how to live without wants, to suffer without complaint, and to die singing
—Alexis de Tocqueville
Topics: Singing
In America one of the first things done in a new State is to make the post go there; in the forests of Michigan there is no cabin so isolated, no valley so wild, but that letters and newspapers arrive at least once a week.
—Alexis de Tocqueville
Topics: America
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 social order destroyed by a revolution is almost always better than that which immediately preceded it, and experience shows that the most dangerous moment for a bad government is generally that in which it sets about reform.
—Alexis de Tocqueville
Topics: Correction, Government, Reform
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
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: Christianity, Liberty
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
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
Chance does nothing that has not been prepared beforehand.
—Alexis de Tocqueville
Topics: Chance, Luck, Fortune
Though it is very important for man as an individual that his religion should be true, that is not the case for society. Society has nothing to fear or hope from another life; what is most important for it is not that all citizens profess the true religion but that they should profess religion.
—Alexis de Tocqueville
The last thing a political party gives up is its vocabulary.
—Alexis de Tocqueville
Topics: Words
Calvinism is a democratic and republican religion.
—Alexis de Tocqueville
I have no hesitation in saying that although the American woman never leaves her domestic sphere and is in some respects very dependent within it, nowhere does she enjoy a higher station. And if anyone asks me what I think the chief cause of the extraordinary prosperity and growing power of this nation, I should answer that it is due to the superiority of their women.
—Alexis de Tocqueville
Topics: Women
In other words, a democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it.
—Alexis de Tocqueville
Topics: Taxation, Taxes
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.
—Alexis de Tocqueville
Topics: Law, Lawyers
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
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