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"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."
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"I am concerned about the whole man. I am concerned about what the people, using their government as an instrument and a tool, can do toward building the whole man, which will mean a better society and a better world."
"No more distressing moment can ever face a British government than that which requires it to come to a hard, fast and specific decision."
"Democracy is not so much a form of government as a set of principles."
"There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you."
"In the US, there is basically one party - the business party. It has two factions, called Democrats and Republicans, which are somewhat different but carry out variations on the same policies. By and large, I am opposed to those policies. As is most of the population."
"On account of being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter what it does."
"Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated."
"There are no doubts that western governments are willfully inducing radiation sickness into segments of their city populations."
"The ugliest government is the one which is spreading fear to its own people! The finest government is the one which encourages its own people to criticize the government harshly."
"Under the doctrine of separation of powers, the manner in which the president personally exercises his assigned executive powers is not subject to questioning by another branch of government."
Explore more quotes by 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 their sight, and in retiring draws them on. At every moment they think they are about to grasp it; it escapes at every moment from their hold. They are near enough to see its charms, but too far off to enjoy them; and before they have fully tasted its delights they die."
"Nothing is more necessary to the culture of the higher sciences, or of the more elevated departments of science, than meditation; and nothing is less suited to meditation than the structure of democratic society."
"The practice which obtains amongst the Americans of fixing the standard of their judgment in themselves alone, leads them to other habits of mind. As they perceive that they succeed in resolving without assistance all the little difficulties which their practical life presents, they readily conclude that everything in the world may be explained, and that nothing in it transcends the limits of the understanding. Thus they fall to denying what they cannot comprehend; which leaves them but little faith for whatever is extraordinary, and an almost insurmountable distaste for whatever is supernatural."
"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 respect aristocracy is far more favorable to poetry; for things commonly grow larger and more obscure as they are more remote; and, for this two-fold reason, they are better suited to the delineation of the ideal."
"The short space of threescore years can never content the imagination of man; nor can the imperfect joys of this world satisfy his heart. Man alone, of all created beings, displays a natural contempt of existence, and yet a boundless desire to exist; he scorns life, but he dreads annihilation. These different feelings incessantly urged his soul to the contemplation of a future state, and religion directs his musings thither. Religion, then, is simply another form of hope; and it is no less natural to the human heart than hope itself."
"Laws are always unstable unless they are founded upon the manners of the nation, manners are the only durable and resisting power in a people."
"There is a natural prejudice which prompts men to despise whomsoever has been their inferior long after he has become their equal."
"What is called family pride is often founded on the illusion of self-love. A man wishes to perpetuate and immortalize himself."
"Under the absolute sway of an individual despot the body was attacked in order to subdue the soul, and the soul escaped the blows which were directed against it and rose superior to the attempt; but such is not the course adopted by tyranny in democratic republics; there the body is left free, and the soul is enslaved."
"One has to understand that equality ends up by infiltrating the world of politics as it does everywhere else. It would be impossible to imagine men forever unequal in one respect, yet equal in others; they must, in the end, come to be equal in all.Now, I am aware of only two means of establishing equality in the world of politics: rights have to be granted to every citizen or to none."
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