Famous Quotes from ...

Alexis de Tocqueville

  • With much care and skill power has been broken into fragments in the American township, so that the maximum possible number of people have some concern with public affairs... Alexis de Tocqueville {view}
  • For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances; what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?... Alexis de Tocqueville {view}
  • Nothing is quite so wretchedly corrupt as an aristocracy which has lost its power but kept its wealth and which still has endless leisure to devote to nothing but banal enjoyments. All its great thoughts and passionate energy are things of the past, and nothing but a host of petty, gnawing vices now cling to it like worms to a corpse.... Alexis de Tocqueville {view}
  • A democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it.... Alexis de Tocqueville {view}