Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocquevillewas a French diplomat, political scientist, and historian. He was best known for his works Democracy in Americaand The Old Regime and the Revolution. In both 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...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionHistorian
Date of Birth29 July 1805
CountryFrance
The most durable monument of human labor is that which recalls the wretchedness and nothingness of man.
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.
There is hardly a pioneer's hut which does not contain a few odd volumes of Shakespeare. I remember reading the feudal drama of Henry V for the first time in a log cabin.
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.
The Indian knew how to live without wants, to suffer without complaint, and to die singing.
There is hardly a political question in the United States which does not sooner or later turn into a judicial one.
The health of a democratic society may be measured by the quality of functions performed by private citizens.
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.
The whole life of an American is passed like a game of chance, a revolutionary crisis, or a battle.
In no other country in the world is the love of property keener or more alert than in the United States, and nowhere else does the majority display less inclination toward doctrines which in any way threaten the way property is owned.
He was as great as a man can be without morality.
The power of the periodical press is second only to that of the people.
The genius of democracies is seen not only in the great number of new words introduced but even more in the new ideas they express.
We can state with conviction, therefore, that a man's support for absolute government is in direct proportion to the contempt he feels for his country.