Alexis de Tocqueville Quotes

Grant me thirty years of equal division of inheritances and a free press, and I will provide you with a republic.

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.

In America the majority raises formidable barriers around the liberty of opinion; within these barriers an author may write what he pleases, but woe to him if he goes beyond them.

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.

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.

The genius of democracies is seen not only in the great number of new words introduced but even more in the new ideas they express.

I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America.

In countries where associations are free, secret societies are unknown. In America there are factions, but no conspiracies.

Scarcely any political question arises in the United States that is not resolved, sooner or later, into a judicial question.

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.