Humans Quotes by Alexis de Tocqueville

20 Humans quotes by Alexis de Tocqueville

All Humans quotes Alexis de Tocqueville’s page

Tocqueville watches humanity through the lens of early American democracy, noting the subtle customs that bind citizens together. In these twenty quotes his sharp eye captures both the promise and the perils of collective life.

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I have only one passion, the love of liberty and human dignity.

Alexis de Tocqueville

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The most durable monument of human labor is that which recalls the wretchedness and nothingness of man.

Alexis de Tocqueville

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General ideas are no proof of the strength, but rather of the insufficiency of the human intellect.

Alexis de Tocqueville

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In the United States, associations are established to promote the public safety, commerce, industry, morality, and religion. There is no end which…

Alexis de Tocqueville

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Of all the countries of the world America is the one where the movement of thought and human industry is the most…

Alexis de Tocqueville

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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

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Two things in America are astonishing: the changeableness of most human behavior and the strange stability of certain principles. Men are constantly…

Alexis de Tocqueville

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In the United States, there is no end which human will despairs of attaining through the combined power of individuals united in…

Alexis de Tocqueville

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One of the most ordinary weaknesses of the human intellect is to seek to reconcile contrary principles, and to purchase peace at…

Alexis de Tocqueville

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It is from the midst of this putrid sewer that the greatest river of human industry springs up and carries fertility to…

Alexis de Tocqueville

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But one also finds in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to want to bring the…

Alexis de Tocqueville

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It is above all in the present democratic age that the true friends of liberty and human grandeur must remain constantly vigilant…

Alexis de Tocqueville

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In the United States the sovereign authority is religious, and consequently hypocrisy must be common; but there is no country in the…

Alexis de Tocqueville

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Among the laws controlling human societies there is one more precise and clearer, it seems to me, than all the others. If…

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I am deeply convinced that any permanent, regular administrative system whose aim is to provide for the needs of the poor will…

Alexis de Tocqueville

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Consider any individual at any period of his life, and you will always find him preoccupied with fresh plans to increase his…

Alexis de Tocqueville

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There is, in fact, a manly and lawful passion for equality which excites men to wish all to be powerful and honored.…

Alexis de Tocqueville

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I have always thought it rather interesting to follow the involuntary movements of fear in clever people. Fools coarsely display their cowardice…

Alexis de Tocqueville

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Religion in America . . . Must be regarded as the foremost of the political institutions for that country; for if it…

Alexis de Tocqueville

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On this waterlogged landscape…are scattered palaces and hovels…It is here that the human spirit becomes perfect, and at the same time brutalised,…

Alexis de Tocqueville

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All around you everything is on the move,

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I have no hesitation in saying that although the American woman never leaves her domestic sphere and is in some respects very dependent within…

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No state of society or laws can render men so much alike but that education, fortune, and tastes will interpose some differences between them;…

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I do not know if the people of the United States would vote for superior men if they ran for office, but there can…

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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…

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The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.

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“I am unacquainted with His designs, but I shall not cease to believe in them because I cannot fathom them, and I had rather…

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I questioned the faithful of all communions; I particularly sought the society of clergymen, who are the depositories of the various creeds and have…

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Christianity is the companion of liberty in all its conflicts, the cradle of its infancy, and the divine source of its claims.

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The more alike men are, the weaker each feels in the face of all.

Alexis de Tocqueville

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“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

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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

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