8 Quotes by Alexis de Tocqueville about government


  • Author Alexis de Tocqueville
  • Quote

    There is, in fact, a manly and lawful passion for equality which excites men to wish all to be powerful and honored. This passion tends to elevate the humble to the rank of the great; but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level, and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom.

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  • Author Alexis de Tocqueville
  • Quote

    When I see that the right and the means of absolute command are conferred on any power whatever, be it called a people or a king, an aristocracy or a democracy, a monarchy or a republic, I say there is the germ of tyranny, and I seek to live elsewhere, under other laws.

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  • Author Alexis de Tocqueville
  • Quote

    Society will develop a new kind of servitude which covers the surface of society with a network of complicated rules, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate. It does not tyrannise but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

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  • Author Alexis de Tocqueville
  • Quote

    There is hardly a congressman prepared to go home until he has at least one speech printed and sent to his constituents, and he won't let anybody interrupt his harangue until he has made all his useful suggestions about the 24 states of the Union, and especially the district he represents.

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  • Author Alexis de Tocqueville
  • Quote

    At the head of any new undertaking where in France you would find the government, or in England some great lord, in the United States you are sure to find an association.

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