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If it be of the highest importance to man, as an individual, that his religion should be true, the case of society is not the same. Society has no future life to hope for or to fear; and provided the citizens profess a religion, the peculiar tenets of that religion are of very little importance to its interests.

— Alexis de Tocqueville Democracy in America, Volume I (1835)

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Variants

Though it is very important for man as an individual that his religion should be true, that is not the case for society. Society has nothing to fear or hope from another life; what is most important for it is not that all citizens profess the true religion but that they should profess religion.

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Laws are always unstable unless they are founded on the manners of a nation; and manners are the only durable and resisting power in a people.

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What chiefly diverts the men of democracies from lofty ambition is not the scantiness of their fortunes, but the vehemence of the exertions they daily make to improve them.

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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.

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

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In democratic ages men rarely sacrifice themselves for another, but they show a general compassion for all the human race.

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Alexis de Tocqueville (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.