The President … may err … Congress may decide amiss … But if the Supreme Court is ever composed of imprudent or bad men, the Union may be plunged into anarchy or civil war. "The democracy prevailing over American societies appeared to me to be advancing rapidly to power in Europe. That was the moment I conceived the idea for the book that lies before the reader." Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America "I confess that in America I saw more than America; I sought there the image of democracy itself, with its inclinations, its character, its prejudices, and its passions, in order to learn what we have to fear or hope from its progress." Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America Author’s Life "Nothing is more wonderful than the art of being free, but nothing is harder to learn how to use than freedom." ― Alexis de Tocqueville, [Democracy in America](https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/90454) "Society is endangered not by the great profligacy of a few, but by the laxity of morals amongst all." ― Alexis de Tocqueville, [Democracy in America](https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/90454) "everybody feels the evil, but no one has courage or energy enough to seek the cure" ― Alexis de Tocqueville, [Democracy in America](https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/90454). (mirrors Thoreau’s Hacking at the Branches, while no one is Striking at the Roots) "Slavery…dishonors labor. It introduces idleness into society, and with idleness, ignorance and pride, luxury and distress. It enervates the powers of the mind and benumbs the activity of man." ― Alexis de Tocqueville, [Democracy in America](https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/90454) "The executive power in our government is not the only, perhaps not even the principal, object of my solicitude. The tyranny of the legislature is really the danger most to be feared, and will continue to be so for many years to come. The tyranny of the executive power will come in its turn, but at a more distant period." ― Thomas Jefferson, [Democracy in America](https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/90454) "[N]ow that I am drawing to the close of this work, in which I have spoken of so many important things done by the Americans, to what the singular prosperity and growing strength of that people ought mainly to be attributed, I should reply: To the superiority of their women." ― Alexis de Tocqueville, [Democracy in America](https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/90454) "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, [Democracy in America](https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/90454) "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 and enlightened citizens are opposed to all progress, whilst men without patriotism and without principle put themselves forward as the apostles of civilization and intelligence." "I seek to trace the novel features under which despotism may appear in the world. The first thing that strikes the observation is an innumerable multitude of men, all equal and alike, incessantly endeavoring to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives. Each of them, living apart, is as a stranger to the fate of all the rest; his children and his private friends constitute to him the whole of mankind. As for the rest of his fellow citizens, he is close to them, but he does not see them; he touches them, but he does not feel them; he exists only in himself and for himself alone; and if his kindred still remain to him, he may be said at any rate to have lost his country." ― Alexis de Tocqueville, [Democracy in America](https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/90454) "There is no country in the world in which everything can be provided for by laws, or in which political institutions can prove a substitute for common sense and public morality." ― Alexis de Tocqueville, [Democracy in America](https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/90454) "From the time when the exercise of the intellect became a source of strength and of wealth, we see that every addition to science, every fresh truth, and every new idea became a germ of power placed within the reach of the people. Poetry, eloquence, and memory, the graces of the mind, the fire of imagination, depth of thought, and all the gifts which Heaven scatters at a venture turned to the advantage of democracy; and even when they were in the possession of its adversaries, they still served its cause by throwing into bold relief the natural greatness of man. Its conquests spread, therefore, with those of civilization and knowledge; and literature became an arsenal open to all, where the poor and the weak daily resorted for arms." ― Alexis de Tocqueville, [Democracy in America](https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/90454) "[Patriotism] is in itself a kind of religion: it does not reason, but it acts from the impulse of faith and sentiment." ― Alexis de Tocqueville, [Democracy in America](https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/90454) "The territorial aristocracy of former ages was either bound by law, or thought itself bound by usage, to come to the relief of its serving-men and to relieve their distress. But the manufacturing aristocracy of our age first impoverishes and debases the men who serve it and then abandons them to be supported by the charity of the public. This is a natural consequence of what has been said before. Between the workman and the master there are frequent relations, but no real association. I am of the opinion, on the whole, that the manufacturing aristocracy which is growing up under our eyes is one of the harshest that ever existed in the world; but at the same time it is one of the most confined and least dangerous. Nevertheless, the friends of democracy should keep their eyes anxiously fixed in this direction; for if ever a permanent inequality of conditions and aristocracy again penetrates into the world, it may be predicted that this is the gate by which they will enter." ― Alexis de Tocqueville, [Democracy in America](https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/90454) "A nation cannot long remain strong when every man belonging to it is individually weak" ― Alexis de Tocqueville, [Democracy in America](https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/90454) "Nations, as well as men, almost always betray the most prominent features of their future destiny in their earliest years." ― Alexis de Tocqueville, [Democracy in America](https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/90454) "There is a natural prejudice which prompts men to despise whomsoever has been their inferior long after he is become their equal;" ― Alexis de Tocqueville, [Democracy in America](https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/90454) "The most natural privilege of man, next to the right of acting for himself, is that of combining his exertions with those of his fellow-creatures, and of acting in common with them." ― Alexis de Tocqueville, [Democracy in America](https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/90454) (The human superpower, cooperation) "During my stay in the United States, I witnessed the spontaneous formation of committees in a country for the pursuit and prosecution of a man who had committed a great crime. In Europe, a criminal is an unhappy man who is struggling for his life against the agents of power, whilst the people are merely a spectator of the conflict: in America, he is looked upon as an enemy of the human race, and the whole of mankind is against him." ― Alexis de Tocqueville, [Democracy in America](https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/90454) "It was never assumed in the United States that the citizen of a free country has a right to do whatever he pleases; on the contrary, social obligations were there imposed upon him more various than anywhere else." ― Alexis de Tocqueville, [Democracy in America](https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/90454) "Town-meetings are to liberty what primary schools are to science;" ― Alexis de Tocqueville, [Democracy in America](https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/90454) In countries where associations are free, secret societies are unknown. In America there are factions, but no conspiracies. The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults. - [Muhammad](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Muhammad "Muhammad") brought down from heaven and put into the [Koran](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Qur%27an "Qur'an") not religious doctrines only, but political maxims, criminal and civil laws, and scientific theories. The Gospels, on the other hand, deal only with the general relations between man and God and between man and man. Beyond that, they teach nothing and do not oblige people to believe anything. That alone, among a thousand reasons, is enough to show that Islam will not be able to hold its power long in ages of enlightenment and democracy, while Christianity is destined to reign in such ages, as in all others. - Book One, Chapter V. Trade is the natural enemy of all violent passions. Trade loves moderation, delights in compromise, and is most careful to avoid anger. It is patient, supple, and insinuating, only resorting to extreme measures in cases of absolute necessity. Trade makes men independent of one another and gives them a high idea of their personal importance: it leads them to want to manage their own affairs and teaches them to succeed therein. Hence it makes them inclined to liberty but disinclined to revolution. Book Three, Chapter XXI. - If there ever are great revolutions there, they will be caused by the presence of the blacks upon American soil. That is to say, it will not be the equality of social conditions but rather their inequality which may give rise thereto. - Book Three, Chapter XXI. - I should have loved freedom, I believe, at all times, but in the time in which we live I am ready to worship it. - Book Four, Chapter VII. - As the past has ceased to throw its light upon the future, the mind of man wanders in obscurity. [Wikiquote Alexis_de_Tocqueville](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alexis_de_Tocqueville) "A new science of politics is needed for a new world." Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America "What are the lessons that the French might learn from the American experiment with democracy?" asks Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America. "Democracy has thus been abandoned to its primitive instincts; it has grown like those children who, deprived of a father’s care, are left to fend for themselves in the streets of our towns and who come to learn only the vices and wretchedness of our society." Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America.