Alexis de Tocqueville Quotes

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

What is most important for democracy is not that great fortunes should not exist, but that great fortunes should not remain in the same hands. In that way there are rich men, but they do not form a class.

The world belongs to those with the most energy.

Everybody feels the evil, but no one has courage or energy enough to seek the cure.

Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.

There is no country in the world in which everything can be provided for by the laws, or in which political institutions can prove a substitute for common sense and public morality.

Democratic nations care but little for what has been, but they are haunted by visions of what will be.

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.

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

Laws are always unstable unless they are founded on the manners of a nation; and manners are the only durable and resisting power in a people.

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.

America is a country where they have freedom of speech but everyone says the same thing.