Misattributed to Tocqueville. “Democracy In America -- Vol. It has been said of Alexis de Tocqueville that “no authority on America has equaled him in prophetic vision.” When we view how much political determination, in which “the ever increasing despotism of the majority…makes every eye turn to the state,” has displaced freedom, it … I remember reading the feudal drama of Henry V for the first time in a log cabin. “Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate. Those that despise people will never get the best out of others and themselves. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude. It is worth recalling, however, that Tocqueville clearly separated government from administration. 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.”, “Men will not accept truth at the hands of their enemies, and truth is seldom offered to them by their friends”, “I have always thought it rather interesting to follow the involuntary movements of fear in clever people. America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great. “Democracy in America”, p.178, University of Chicago Press, Alexis De Tocqueville (1863). Book by Alexis de Tocqueville. You can't have it both ways. No state of society or laws can render men so much alike but that education, fortune, and tastes will interpose some differences between them; and though different men may sometimes find it their interest to combine for the same purposes, they will never make it their pleasure. In the United States, the majority undertakes to supply a multitude of ready-made opinions for the use of individuals, who are thus relieved from the … “Democracy in America”, p.18. The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money. Chapter XIII, 1835. 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. History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies. It is the dissimilarities and inequalities among men which give rise to the notion of honor; as such differences become less, it grows feeble; and when they disappear, it will vanish too. . In other words, a democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it. Chapter III, Part I, 1835. Be the first to learn about new releases! 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 (2006). . Fools coarsely display their cowardice in all its nakedness, but the others are able to cover it with a veil so delicate, so daintily woven with small plausible lies, that there is some pleasure to be found in contemplating this ingenious work of the human intelligence.”, “I am unaware of his plans but I shall never stop believing in them because I cannot fathom them and I prefer to mistrust my own intellectual capacities than his justice.”. “It is indeed difficult to imagine how men who have entirely renounced the habit of managing their own affairs could be successful in choosing those who ought to lead them. The whole life of an American is passed like a game of chance, a revolutionary crisis, or a battle. It is the state that has undertaken virtually alone to give bread to the hungry, aid and shelter to the sick, and work to the idle, the state that has made itself virtually the sole healer of all miseries.”. In France, I had almost always seen the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom marching in opposite directions. Alexis de Tocqueville on Individualism. Those aren't rights, those are the rations of slavery — hay and a barn for human cattle.”, “Society is endangered not by the great profligacy of a few, but by the laxity of morals amongst all.”, “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.”, “Society was cut in two: those who had nothing united in common envy; those who had anything united in common terror.”, “The health of a democratic society may be measured by the quality of functions performed by private citizens.”, “There are two things which a democratic people will always find very difficult - to begin a war and to end it.”, “Every nation that has ended in tyranny has come to that end by way of good order.

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