"In America religion is the road to knowledge, and the observance of the divine laws leads man to civil freedom.












The whole people contracts the habits and tastes of the magistrate.

More Alexis de Tocqueville quotes
"The only way to neutralize the effect of public journals is to multiply them indefinitely.
"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...
"The greatest difficulty in antiquity with that of altering the law; among the moderns, it is that of altering the manners.
"The only nations which deny the utility of provincial liberties are those which have fewest of them; in other words, those who are unacquainted with t...
"When justice is more certain and more mild, is at the same time more efficacious.
"The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democracy, from beneath which the old aristocratic colors sometimes peep.
"Nations as well as men require time to learn, whatever may be their intelligence or zeal.
"There is a natural prejudice which prompts men to despise whomsoever has been their inferior long after he has become their equal.
"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 ...
"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 ...