“ A man is born; his first years go by in obscurity amid the pleasures or hardships of childhood. He grows up; then comes the beginning of manhood; finally society's gates open to welcome him; he comes… Alexis de Tocqueville
“ Sixty years is too brief a compass for man’s imagination. The incomplete joys of this world can never satisfy his heart. Alexis de Tocqueville
“ The passion for war is so intense that there is no undertaking so mad, or so injurious to the welfare of the State, that a man does not consider himself honored in defending it, at the risk of his lif… Alexis de Tocqueville
“ Men are not corrupted by the exercise of power, or debased by the habit of obedience; but by the exercise of a power which they believe to be illegitimate, and by obedience to a rule which they consid… Alexis de Tocqueville
“ In running over the pages of our history for seven hundred years, we shall scarcely find a single great event which has not promoted equality of condition. The Crusades and the English wars decimated… Alexis de Tocqueville
“ 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 cen… Alexis de Tocqueville
“ When justice is more certain and more mild, is at the same time more efficacious. Alexis de Tocqueville
“ A central administration enervates the nations in which it exists by incessantly diminishing their public spirit. If such an administration succeeds in convincing all the disposable resources of a peo… Alexis de Tocqueville
“ Everybody feels the evil, but no one has courage or energy enough to seek the cure Alexis de Tocqueville
“ The principle of equality, which makes men independent of each other, gives them a habit and a taste for following, in their private actions, no other guide but their own will. This complete independe… Alexis de Tocqueville
“ Nations, as well as men, almost always betray the most prominent features of their future destiny in their earliest years. Alexis de Tocqueville
“ On close inspection, we shall find that religion, and not fear, has ever been the cause of the long-lived prosperity of an absolute government. Alexis de Tocqueville
“ The religionists are the enemies of liberty, and the friends of liberty attack religion; the high-minded and the noble advocate bondage, and the meanest and most servile preach independence; honest an… Alexis de Tocqueville
“ Aristocracy naturally leads the human mind to the contemplation of the past, and fixes it there. Democracy, on the contrary, gives men a sort of instinctive distaste for what is ancient. In this respe… Alexis de Tocqueville
“ I have only to contemplate myself; man comes from nothing, passes through time, and disappears forever in the bosom of God. He is seen but for a moment wandering on the verge of two abysses, and then… Alexis de Tocqueville
“ Amongst democratic nations men easily attain a certain equality of conditions: they can never attain the equality they desire. It perpetually retires from before them, yet without hiding itself from t… Alexis de Tocqueville
“ 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. Alexis de Tocqueville
