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Alexis de Tocqueville Quotes

Alexis de Tocqueville quotes about time

French Historian July 29, 1805 – April 16, 1859

Alexis de Tocqueville quotes in french
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Quotes

It is above all in the present democratic age that the true friends of liberty and human grandeur must remain constantly vigilant and ready to prevent the social power from lightly sacrificing the particular rights of a few individuals to the general execution of its designs. In such times there is no citizen so obscure that it is not very dangerous to allow him to be oppressed, and there are no individual rights so unimportant that they can be sacrificed to arbitrariness with impunity. Alexis de Tocqueville
I have only to contemplate myself; man comes from nothing, passes through time, and disappears forever in the bosom of God. He is seen but for a moment wandering on the verge of two abysses, and then is lost. If man were wholly ignorant of himself he would have no poetry in him, for one cannot describe what one does not conceive. If he saw himself clearly, his imagination would remain idle and would have nothing to add to the picture. But the nature of man is sufficiently revealed for him to... Alexis de Tocqueville
I have always thought that in revolutions, especially democratic revolutions, madmen, not those so called by courtesy, but genuine madmen, have played a very considerable political part. One thing is certain, and that is that a condition of semi-madness is not unbecoming at such times, and often even leads to success. Alexis de Tocqueville
It would seem as if the rulers of our time sought only to use men in order to make things great; I wish that they would try a little more to make great men; that they would set less value on the work and more upon the workman; that they would never forget that a nation cannot long remain strong when every man belonging to it is individually weak; and that no form or combination of social polity has yet been devised to make an energetic people out of a community of pusillanimous and enfeebled... Alexis de Tocqueville
When the taste for physical gratifications among them has grown more rapidly than their education . . . the time will come when men are carried away and lose all self-restraint . . . . It is not necessary to do violence to such a people in order to strip them of the rights they enjoy; they themselves willingly loosen their hold. . . . they neglect their chief business which is to remain their own masters. Alexis de Tocqueville
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. Alexis de Tocqueville
Montaigne said long ago: "Were I not to follow the straight road for its straightness, I should follow it for having found by experience that in the end it is commonly the happiest and most useful track." The doctrine of interest rightly understood is not then new, but among the Americans of our time it finds universal acceptance; it has become popular there; you may trace it at the bottom of all their actions, you will remark it in all they say. Alexis de Tocqueville
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. Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville quote: "men who so uneasily tolerate superiors patiently suffer a..."
men who so uneasily tolerate superiors patiently suffer a master, and show themselves proud and servile at the same time. Alexis de Tocqueville
The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democratic paint, but from time to time one can see the old aristocratic colours breaking through. Alexis de Tocqueville

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