Quotes & anectdotes from
the wise,
the foolish,
the courageous &
the drunk

Alexis de Tocqueville Historian

  • Gender: Male
  • Citizenship: France
  • Born: Jul 29, 1805
  • Died: Apr 16, 1859

Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville was a French political thinker and historian best known for his works Democracy in America and The Old Regime and the Revolution. In both of these, he analyzed the improved living standards and social conditions of individuals, as well as their relationship to the market and state in Western societies. Democracy in America was published after Tocqueville's travels in the United States, and is today considered an early work of sociology and political science.

Tocqueville was active in French politics, first under the July Monarchy and then during the Second Republic which succeeded the February 1848 Revolution. He retired from political life after Louis Napoléon Bonaparte's 2 December 1851 coup, and thereafter began work on The Old Regime and the Revolution.

He argued that the importance of the French Revolution was to continue the process of modernizing and centralizing the French state which had begun under King Louis XIV. The failure of the Revolution came from the inexperience of the deputies who were too wedded to abstract Enlightenment ideals.

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.

Those that despise people will never get the best out of others and themselves.

There are many men of principle in both parties in America, but there is no party of principle.

No protracted war can fail to endanger the freedom of a democratic country.

Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.

In politics shared hatreds are almost always the basis of friendships.

There are two things which a democratic people will always find very difficult - to begin a war and to end it.

Life is to be entered upon with courage.

We succeed in enterprises which demand the positive qualities we possess, but we excel in those which can also make use of our defects.

All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and shortest means to accomplish it.

The health of a democratic society may be measured by the quality of functions performed by private citizens.

The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.

I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America.

He was as great as a man can be without morality.

A democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it.

The power of the periodical press is second only to that of the people.

History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.

Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith.

When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness.