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Wikipedia Summary for Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis Charles Henri Clérel, comte de Tocqueville (French: [alɛksi də tɔkvil]; 29 July 1805 – 16 April 1859), colloquially known as Tocqueville (), was a French aristocrat, diplomat, political scientist, political philosopher and historian. He is best known for his works Democracy in America (appearing in two volumes, 1835 and 1840) and The Old Regime and the Revolution (1856). In both, he analysed 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 (1830–1848) and then during the Second Republic (1849–1851) 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. Tocqueville argued 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.
Tocqueville was a classical liberal who advocated parliamentary government and was skeptical of the extremes of democracy. During his time in parliament, he sat on the centre-left, but the complex and restless nature of his liberalism has led to contrasting interpretations and admirers across the political spectrum. Regarding his political position, Tocqueville wrote "the word 'left' is [...] the word I wanted to attach to my name so that it would remain attached to it forever".
The power of the periodical press is second only to that of the people.
Christianity is the companion of liberty in all its conflicts, the cradle of its infancy, and the divine source of its claims.
In politics a community of hatred is almost always the foundation of friendships.
Socialism is a new form of slavery.
Religion cannot share the material strength of the rulers without being burdened with some of the animosity roused against them.
It is far more important to resist apathy than anarchy or despotism, for apathy can give rise, almost indifferently, to either one.
When the reality of power has been surrendered, it's playing a dangerous game to seek to retain the appearance of it; the external aspect of vigor can sometimes support a debilitated body, but most often it manages to deal it the final blow.
The man who submits to violence is debased by his compliance; but when he submits to that right of authority which he acknowledges in a fellow creature, he rises in some measure above the person who give the command.
If men are to remain civilized or to become so, the art of associating together must grow and improve in the same ratio in which the equality of conditions is increased.
The South, which is peopled with ardent and irascible beings, is becoming more irritated and alarmed.
The only nations which deny the utility of provincial liberties are those which have fewest of them; in other words, those who are unacquainted with the institution are the only persons who passed censure upon it.
A long war almost always places nations in this sad alternative: that their defeat delivers them to destruction and their triumph to despotism.
Nations as well as men require time to learn, whatever may be their intelligence or zeal.
Nothing, on the other hand, can be more impenetrable to the uninitiated than a legislation founded upon precedents.
The man who asks of freedom anything other than itself is born to be a slave.
The only way to neutralize the effect of public journals is to multiply them indefinitely.
Comfort becomes a goal when distinctions of rank are abolished and privileges destroyed.
In the United States, the majority takes upon itself the task of supplying to the individual a mass of ready-made opinions, thus relieving him of the necessity to take the proper responsibility of arriving at his own.
The evil which one suffers patiently as inevitable seems insupportable as soon as he conceives the idea of escaping from it.
A man who raises himself by degrees to wealth and power, contracts, in the course of this protracted labor, habits of prudence and restraint which he cannot afterwards shake off. A man cannot gradually enlarge his mind as he does his house.
Nothing is more repugnant to the human mind in an age of equality than the idea of subjection to forms.
By obliging men to turn their attention to other affairs than their own, it rubs off that private selfishness which is the rust of society.
While he loved liberty, he detested the crimes that had been committed in its name. Jon J. Ingalls.
As for me, I am deeply a democrat; this is why I am in no way a socialist. Democracy and socialism cannot go together. You can't have it both ways. Socialism is a new form of slavery.
The tie of language is perhaps the strongest and the most durable that can unite mankind.
The last thing a political party gives up is its vocabulary.
A newspaper is an adviser who does not require to be sought, but who comes of his own accord, and talks to you briefly every day of the common wealth, without distracting you from your private affairs.
Any measure that establishes legal charity on a permanent basis and gives it an administrative form thereby creates an idle and lazy class, living at the expense of the industrial and working class.
The most perilous moment for a bad government is when it seeks to mend its ways. Only consummate statecraft can enable a king to save his throne when, after a long spell of oppression, he sets out to improve the lot of his subjects.
The most dangerous moment for a bad government is when it begins to reform.
Every central government worships uniformity: uniformity relieves it from inquiry into an infinity of details.
Laws are always unstable unless they are founded upon the manners of the nation; manners are the only durable and resisting power in a people.
On this waterlogged landscape....are scattered palaces and hovels....It is here that the human spirit becomes perfect, and at the same time brutalised, that civilisation produces its marvels and that civilised man returns to the savage.
I have seen Americans making great and sincere sacrifices for the key common good and a hundred times I have noticed that, when needs be, they almost always gave each other faithful support.
History, it is easily perceived, is a picture-gallery containing a host of copies and very few originals.
The whole people contracts the habits and tastes of the magistrate.
I do not find fault with equality for drawing men into the pursuit of forbidden pleasures, but for absorbing them entirely in the search for the pleasures that are permitted.
When fortune has been abolished, when every profession is open to everyone, an ambitious man may think it is easy to launch himself on a great career and feel that he has been called to no common destiny. But this is a delusion which experience quickly corrects.
He who seeks freedom for anything but freedom's self is made to be a slave.
If ever America undergoes great revolutions, they will be brought about by the presence of the black race on the soil of the United States -- that is to say, they will owe their origin not to the equality but to the inequality of conditions.
Righteous women in their circle of influence,
beginning in the home, can turn the world around.
Of all the countries of the world America is the one where the movement of thought and human industry is the most continuous and swift.
It must not be forgotten that it is especially dangerous to enslave men in the minor details of life.
A whole nation cannot rise above itself.
Furthermore, when citizens are all almost equal, it becomes difficult for them to defend their independence against the aggressions of power.
America is great because she is good.
Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.
The position of the Americans is quite exceptional, and it may be believed that no democratic people will ever be placed in a similar one.
Can it be believed that the democracy, which has overthrown the feudal system and vanquished kings, will retreat before tradesmen and capitalists?
To get the inestimable good that freedom of the press assures one must know how to submit to the inevitable evil it gives rise to.
The civil jury is the most effective form of sovereignty of the people. It defies the aggressions of time and man. During the reigns of Henry VIII (1509-1547) and Elizabeth I (1158-1603), the civil jury did in reality save the liberties of England.
The only authors whom I acknowledge as American are the journalists. They, indeed, are not great writers, but they speak the language of their countrymen, and make themselves heard by them.
One of the happiest consequences of the absence of government...is the development of individual strength that inevitably follows.
The Americans make associations to give entertainment, to found seminaries, to build inns, to construct churches, to diffuse books, to send missionaries to the antipodes; in this manner, they found hospitals, prisons and schools.
General ideas are no proof of the strength, but rather of the insufficiency of the human intellect.
Absolute excellence is rarely to be found in any legislation.
No stigma attaches to the love of money in America, and provided it does not exceed the bounds imposed by public order, it is held in honor. The American will describe as noble and estimable ambition that our medieval ancestors would have called base cupidity.
Trade is the natural enemy of all violent passions. Trade loves moderation, delights in compromise, and is most careful to avoid anger. It is patient, supple, and insinuating, only resorting to extreme measures in cases of absolute necessity.
Longer Version:
Trade is the natural enemy of all violent passions. Trade loves moderation, delights in compromise, and is most careful to avoid anger. It is patient, supple, and insinuating, only resorting to extreme measures in cases of absolute necessity. Trade makes men independent of one another and gives them a high idea of their personal importance: it leads them to want to manage their own affairs and teaches them to succeed therein. Hence it makes them inclined to liberty but disinclined to revolution.
When justice is more certain and more mild, is at the same time more efficacious.
Slavery...dishonors labor. It introduces idleness into society, and with idleness, ignorance and pride, luxury and distress. It enervates the powers of the mind and benumbs the activity of man.
Remember that life is neither pain nor pleasure; it is serious business, to be entered upon with courage and in a spirit of self-sacrifice.
In countries where associations are free, secret societies are unknown. In America there are factions, but no conspiracies.
Durability is one of the chief elements of strength. Nothing is either loved or feared but that which is likely to endure.
In America one of the first things done in a new State is to make the post go there; in the forests of Michigan there is no cabin so isolated, no valley so wild, but that letters and newspapers arrive at least once a week.
What chiefly diverts the men of democracies from lofty ambition is not the scantiness of their fortunes, but the vehemence of the exertions they daily make to improve them.
Useful undertakings which require sustained attention and vigorous precision in order to succeed often end up by being abandoned, for, in America, as elsewhere, the people move forward by sudden impulses and short-lived efforts.
There is one universal law that has been formed, or at least adoptedby the majority of mankind. That law is justice. Justice forms the cornerstone of each nation's law.
When I refuse to obey an unjust law, I do not contest the right of the majority to command, but I simply appeal from the sovereignty of the people to the sovereignty of mankind.
The more government takes the place of associations, the more will individuals lose the idea of forming associations and need the government to come to their help. That is a vicious circle of cause and effect.
Human understanding more easily invents new things than new words.
The most durable monument of human labor is that which recalls the wretchedness and nothingness of man.
Among a democratic people, where there is no hereditary wealth, every man works to earn a living, or is born of parents who have worked. The notion of labor is therefore presented to the mind, on every side, as the necessary, natural, and honest condition.
Democratic institutions generally give men a lofty notion of their country and themselves.
I avow that I do not hold that complete and instantaneous love for the freedom of the press that one accords to things whose nature is unqualifiedly good. I love it out of consideration for the evils it prevents much more than for the good it does.
I passionately love liberty, legality, respect for rights, but not democracy. That is what I find in the depth of my soul.
When a large number of organs of the press come to advance along the same track, their influence becomes almost irresistible in the long term, and public opinion, struck always from the same side, ends by yielding under their blows.
The taste for well-being is the prominent and indelible feature of democratic times.
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.