“Nothing is more necessary to the culture of the higher sciences, or of the more elevated departments of science, than meditation; and… — Alexis de Tocqueville Copy Share Image
One of the distinguishing characteristics of a democratic period is the taste that all men have for easy success and present enjoyment.… — Alexis de Tocqueville Copy Share Image
In democracies, nothing is more great or more brilliant than commerce: it attracts the attention of the public, and fills the imagination… — Alexis de Tocqueville Copy Share Image
No men are less addicted to reverie than the citizens of a democracy. — Alexis de Tocqueville Copy Share Image
“Under its sway the transactions of the public administration are not nearly so important as what is done by private exertion. Democracy… — Alexis de Tocqueville Copy Share Image
“The foremost, or indeed the sole condition, which is required in order to succeed in centralizing the supreme power in a democratic… — Alexis de Tocqueville Copy Share Image
[T]he main evil of the present democratic institutions of the united states does not raise, as is often asserted in Europe, from… — Alexis de Tocqueville Copy Share Image
Americans of all ages, all stations in life, and all types of disposition are forever forming associations. There are not only commercial… — Alexis de Tocqueville Copy Share Image
In democratic centuries, on the contrary, when the duties of each individual toward the species are much clearer, devotion toward one man… — Alexis de Tocqueville Copy Share Image
Despotism may be able to do without religion, but democracy cannot. — Alexis de Tocqueville Copy Share Image
When an opinion has taken root in a democracy and established itself in the minds of the majority, it afterward persists by… — Alexis de Tocqueville Copy Share Image
“In democratic countries, knowledge of how to combine is the mother of all other forms of knowledge; on its progress depends that… — Alexis de Tocqueville Copy Share Image
By and large the literature of a democracy will never exhibit the order, regularity, skill, and art characteristic of aristocratic literature; formal… — Alexis De Tocqueville Copy Share Image
I have no hesitation in saying that although the American woman never leaves her domestic sphere and is in some respects very dependent within… — Alexis de Tocqueville Copy Share Image
No state of society or laws can render men so much alike but that education, fortune, and tastes will interpose some differences between them;… — Alexis de Tocqueville Copy Share Image
I do not know if the people of the United States would vote for superior men if they ran for office, but there can… — Alexis de Tocqueville Copy Share Image
What good does it do me, after all, if an ever-watchful authority keeps an eye out to ensure that my pleasures will be tranquil… — Alexis de Tocqueville Copy Share Image
The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults. — Alexis de Tocqueville Copy Share Image
“I am unacquainted with His designs, but I shall not cease to believe in them because I cannot fathom them, and I had rather… — Alexis de Tocqueville Copy Share Image
I questioned the faithful of all communions; I particularly sought the society of clergymen, who are the depositories of the various creeds and have… — Alexis de Tocqueville Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
The more alike men are, the weaker each feels in the face of all. — Alexis de Tocqueville Copy Share Image
“There is a twofold liberty, natural (I mean as our nature is now corrupt) and civil or federal. The first is common to man… — Alexis De Tocqueville Copy Share Image
Upon my arrival in the United States the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention; and the longer… — Alexis de Tocqueville Copy Share Image