Alexis de Tocqueville

"It is extremely difficult in democratic times to draw nations into hostilities; but … it is almost impossible that any two of them should go to war without embroiling the rest. The interests of all are so interlaced, their opinions and their wants so much alike, that none can remain quiet when the others stir. Wars therefore become more rare, but when they break out, they spread over a larger field."

- Alexis de Tocqueville

"Thus not only does democracy make every man forget his ancestors, but it hides his descendants and separates his contemporaries from him; it throws him back forever upon himself alone and threatens in the end to confine him entirely within the solitude of his own heart."

- Alexis de Tocqueville

"If, in short, you are of the opinion that the principal object of government is not to confer the greatest possible glory upon the body of the nation, but to ensure the greatest enjoyment and to avoid the most misery to each of the individuals who compose it—if such be your desire, then equalize the conditions of men and establish democratic institutions."

- Alexis de Tocqueville

"I think it may be admitted as a general and constant rule that among civilized nations the warlike passions will become more rare and less intense in proportion as social conditions are more equal."

- Alexis de Tocqueville

"A French observer is surprised to hear how often an English or an American lawyer quotes the opinions of others, and how little he alludes to his own; … This abnegation of his own opinion, and this implicit deference to the opinion of his forefathers, which are common to the English and American lawyer, this servitude of thought which he is obliged to profess, necessarily give him more timid habits and more conservative inclinations in England and America than in France."

- Alexis de Tocqueville

"Democracy does not give the people the most skillful government, but it produces what the ablest governments are frequently unable to create: namely, an all-pervading and restless activity, a superabundant force, and an energy which is inseparable from it and which may, however unfavorable circumstances may be, produce wonders."

- Alexis de Tocqueville

"No protracted war can fail to endanger the freedom of a democratic country … it must invariably and immeasurably increase the powers of the civil government; it must almost compulsorily concentrate the direction of all men and the management of all things in the hands of the administration. … All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and the shortest means to accomplish it."

- Alexis de Tocqueville

"Nothing is so irresistible as the tyrannical power commanding in the name of the people, because while wielding the moral power which belongs to the will of the greater number, it acts at the same time with the quickness and persistence of a single man."

- Alexis de Tocqueville

"It cannot be repeated too often that nothing is more fertile in prodigies than the art of being free; but there is nothing more arduous than the apprenticeship of liberty."

- Alexis de Tocqueville

"Americans of all ages, all stations in life, and all types of dispositions are forever forming associations … at the head of any new undertaking. Where in France you would find the government or in England some territorial magnate, in the United States you are sure to find as an association."

- Alexis de Tocqueville

"In the United States, every one is personally interested in enforcing the obedience of the whole community to the law; for as the minority may shortly rally the majority to its principles, it is interested in professing that respect for the decrees of the legislator which it may soon have occasion to claim for its own. However irksome an enactment may be, the citizen of the United States complies with it, not only because it is the work of the majority, but because it is his own, and he regards it as a contract to which he is himself a party."

- Alexis de Tocqueville

"The power vested in the American courts of justice of pronouncing a statute to be unconstitutional forms one of the most powerful barriers that have ever been devised against the tyranny of political assemblies."

- Alexis de Tocqueville

"The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults."

- Alexis de Tocqueville

"Democratic nations care but little for what has been, but they are haunted by visions of what will be; in this direction their unbounded imagination grows and dilates beyond all measure. Democracy, which shuts the past against the poet, opens the future before him."

- Alexis de Tocqueville

"Better use has been made of association and this powerful instrument of action has been applied for more varied aims in America than anywhere else in the world."

- Alexis de Tocqueville

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

- Alexis de Tocqueville

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

- Alexis de Tocqueville

"Agitation and mutability are inherent in the nature of democratic republics, just as stagnation and sleepiness are the law of absolute monarchies."

- Alexis de Tocqueville

"Is it your object to refine the habits, embellish the manners, and cultivate the arts, to promote the love of poetry, beauty, and glory? Would you constitute a people fitted to act powerfully upon all other nations, and prepared for those high enterprises which, whatever be their results, will leave a name forever famous in history? If you believe such to be the principal object of society, avoid the government of the democracy."

- Alexis de Tocqueville

"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."

- Alexis de Tocqueville