“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.”

“He who in given cases consents to obey his fellows with servility, and who submits his will, and even his thoughts, to their control, how can he pretend that he wishes to be free?”

“But in America the sovereignty of the people is neither hidden nor sterile as with some other nations; mores recognize it, and the laws proclaim it; it spreads with freedom and attains unimpeded its ultimate consequences.”

“For benefits by their very greatness spotlight the difference in conditions and arouse a secret annoyance in those who profit from them. But the charm of simple good manners is almost irresistible.”

“What one must fear, moreover, is not so much the sight of the immorality of the great as that of immorality leading to greatness.”

“Town-meetings are to liberty what primary schools are to science;”

“In the midst of the apparent diversity of human affairs, a certain number of primary facts may be discovered, from which all others are derived.”

“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.”

“No African has ever voluntarily emigrated to the shores of the New World; whence it must be inferred, that all the blacks who are now to be found in that hemisphere are either slaves or freedmen.”

“Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry interests, in one word, so anti-poetic, as the life of a man in the United States.”

“But in the course of thirty years a great change took place, and the North refused to perpetuate what had become the "peculiar institution" of the South, especially as it gave the South a species of aristocratic preponderance.”

“The prestige of royal power has evaporated, but the majesty of the law has failed to take its place. People nowadays despise authority yet still fear it, and fear extracts from them more than they previously gave out of respect and love.”

“Absolute excellence is rarely to be found in any legislation.”

“The language in which thought is embodied is the mere carcass of the thought, and not the idea itself; tribunals may condemn the form, but the sense and spirit of the work is too subtle for their authority.”

“Evils which are patiently endured when they seem inevitable become intolerable once the idea of escape from them is suggested.”

“It is impossible to read this opening paragraph without an involuntary feeling of religious awe; it breathed the very savor of Gospel antiquity. The sincerity of the author heightens his power of language.”

“It would seem that if despotism were to be established among the democratic nations of our days, it might assume a different character; it would be more extensive and more mild; it would degrade men without tormenting them.”

“One of the commonest weaknesses of human intelligence is the wish to reconcile opposing principles and to purchase harmony at the expense of logic.”

“One's love for despotism is in exact proportion to one's contempt for one's country.”

“Each man is forever thrown back on himself alone, and there is danger that he may be shut up in the solitude of his own heart.”

“The will of the nation" is one of those expressions which have been most profusely abused by the wily and the despotic of every age.”

“Now I know of only two methods of establishing equality in the political world; every citizen must be put in possession of his rights, or rights must be granted to no one.”

“I am unacquainted with a more deplorable spectacle than that of a people unable either to defend or to maintain its independence.”

“No form or combination of social polity has yet been devised to make an energetic people out of a community of pusillanimous and enfeebled citizens.”

“Slavery received, but the prejudice to which it has given birth remains stationary.”

“The Revolution in the United States was produced by a mature and thoughtful taste for liberty, and not by a vague and undefined instinct for independence.”

“Nothing is more repugnant to the human mind in an age of equality than the idea of subjection to forms.”

“A central administration enervates the nations in which it exists by incessantly diminishing their public spirit. If such an administration succeeds in convincing all the disposable resources of a people, it impairs at least the renewal of those resources.”

“If I were asked where I place the American aristocracy, I should reply without hesitation that it is not composed of the rich, who are united together by no common tie, but that it occupies the judicial bench and the bar.”

“He who has set his heart exclusively upon the pursuit of worldly welfare is always i a hurry, for he has but a limited time at his disposal to reach, to grasp, and to enjoy it.”

“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.”

“It is the civil jury that really saved the liberties of England.”

“But a democracy can only obtain truth as the result of experience, and many nations may forfeit their existence whilst they are awaiting the consequences of their errors.”

“There is a natural prejudice which prompts men to despise whomsoever has been their inferior long after he has become their equal.”

“I have heard of patriotism in the United States, and it is a virtue which may be found among the people, but never among the leaders of the people.”

“It had been supposed, until our time, that despotism was odious, under whatever form it appeared. But it is a discovery of modern days that there are such things as legitimate tyranny and holy injustice, provided they are exercised in the name of the people.”

“The greatest difficulty in antiquity with that of altering the law; among the moderns, it is that of altering the manners.”

“Men are not corrupted by the exercise of power or debased by the habit of obedience, but by the exercise of a power which they believe to be illegal and by obedience to a rule which they consider to be usurped and oppressive.”

“A whole nation cannot rise above itself.”

“In the United States, the majority undertakes to supply a multitude of ready-made opinions for the use of individuals, who are thus relieved from the necessity of forming opinions of their own.”

“I know of no country, indeed, where the love of money has taken a stronger hold on the affections of men.”

“In the United States the majority undertakes to supply a multitude of ready-made opinions for the use of individuals, who are thus relieved from the necessity of forming opinions of their own.”

“I am of opinion, that, in the democratic ages which are opening upon us, individual independence and local liberties will ever be the produce of artificial contrivance; that centralization will be the natural form of government.”

“In the States of New England, from the first, the condition of the poor was provided for;”

“In the township, as well as everywhere else, the people is the only source of power; but in no stage of government does the body of citizens exercise a more immediate influence.”

“Despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot.”

“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.”

“However enlightened and however skilful a central power may be, it cannot of itself embrace all the details of the existence of a great nation.”

“the advantage of democracy is not, as has been sometimes asserted, that it protects the interests of the whole community, but simply that it protects those of the majority.”