“Rulers who destroy men's freedom commonly begin by trying to retain its forms. ... They cherish the illusion that they can combine the prerogatives of absolute power with the moral authority that comes from popular assent.”

“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.”

“In such an admirable position of the New World, man has no other enemy than himself.”

“Another tendency, which is extremely natural to democratic nations and extremely dangerous, is that which leads them to despise and undervalue the rights of private persons. The attachment which men feel to a right, and the respect which they display for it, is generally proportioned to its importance, or to the length of time during which they have enjoyed it. The rights of private persons amongst democratic nations are commonly of small importance, of recent growth, and extremely precarious; the consequence is that they are often sacrificed without regret, and almost always violated without remorse.”

“Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and supplies 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?”

“The democratic nations that have introduced freedom into their political constitution at the very time when they were augmenting the despotism of their administrative constitution have been led into strange paradoxes. To manage those minor affairs in which good sense is all that is wanted, the people are held to be unequal to the task; but when the government of the country is at stake, the people are invested with immense powers; they are alternately made the play things of their ruler, and his masters, more than kings and less than men. After having exhausted all the different modes of election without finding one to suit their purpose, they are still amazed and still bent on seeking further; as if the evil they notice did not originate in the constitution of the country far more than in that of the electoral body.”

“Next to hating their enemies, men are most inclined to flatter them.”

“The revolution of the United States was the result of a mature and dignified taste for freedom, and not of a vague or ill-defined craving for independence.”

“The province of Texas is still part of the Mexican dominions, but it will soon contain no Mexicans; the same thing has occurred whenever the Anglo-Americans have come into contact with populations of a different origin.”

“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.”