124 quotes
Furthermore, when citizens are all almost equal, it becomes difficult for them to defend their independence against the aggressions of power.
Democracy in America, Volume I (1835)
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.
Democracy in America, Volume II (1840)
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.
Democracy in America, Volume I (1835)
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 necessity of forming opinions of their own.
Democracy in America, Volume II (1840)
The best laws cannot make a constitution work in spite of morals; morals can turn the worst laws to advantage.
De la supériorité des mœurs sur les lois (1831)
The people reign over the American political world as God rules over the universe. It is the cause and the end of all things; everything rises out of it and is absorbed back into it.
Democracy in America, Volume I (1835)
The principle of equality does not destroy the imagination, but lowers its flight to the level of the earth.
Democracy in America, Volume II (1840)
They certainly are not great writers, but they speak their country's language and they make themselves heard.
Democracy in America, Volume II (1840)
I should have loved freedom, I believe, at all times, but in the time in which we live I am ready to worship it.
Democracy in America, Volume II (1840)
In aristocratic societies, enjoyments of the mind are particularly demanded of the sciences; in democratic, those of the body.
The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.
Democracy in America, Volume I (1835)
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.
Democracy in America, Volume II (1840)
If the great questions of the beginning of this century were mainly political, those which will convulse the world at its close will be social.
What most astonishes me in the United States, is not so much the marvelous grandeur of some undertakings, as the innumerable multitude of small ones.
Democracy in America, Volume II (1840)
There is hardly a political question in the United States which does not sooner or later turn into a judicial one.
History is a gallery of pictures in which there are many copies and few originals.
In a revolution, as in a novel, the most difficult part to invent is the end.
Christianity is the companion of liberty in all its conflicts — the cradle of its infancy, and the Divine source of its claims.
The public, therefore, among a democratic people, has a singular power, which aristocratic nations cannot conceive; for it does not persuade others to its beliefs, but it imposes them and makes them permeate the thinking of everyone by a sort of enormous pressure of the mind of all upon the individual intelligence.
Democracy in America, Volume II (1840)
There is hardly a pioneer's hut which does not contain a few odd volumes of Shakespeare. I remember reading the feudal drama of Henry V for the first time in a log cabin.
Democracy in America, Volume II (1840)