Alexis de Tocqueville

The only remedy for the malady of democracy is more democracy.

As the past has ended, so the future will end; the present is our only reality.

I should have loved the French Revolution if it had been the first.

America is a land of wonders, in which everything is in constant motion and every change seems an improvement.

The American republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.

I know of no country in which, generally speaking, there is less independence of mind and true freedom of discussion than in America.

The most dangerous of all oppressions is the oppression of the majority.

Despotism often presents itself as the defender of the oppressed, and the friend of the people.

The progress of democracy seems irresistible, because it is the most uniform, the most ancient, and the most permanent tendency which is to be found in history.

Men are not to be judged by what they do, but by the aim with which they do it.

The American, in his intercourse with strangers, is cold and reserved, but when he has once admitted you to his intimacy, he is a warm and faithful friend.

An aristocracy cannot be created, but it is always possible to destroy one.

The love of equality is the dominant passion of the age.

The first duty of a government is to protect the people, not to protect itself.

The American has no past, but he has a future.

When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness.

The principle of equality has triumphed in the political world, and it is now extending its conquests to the social world.

The most powerful, and perhaps the only, means that we still possess of interesting men in the welfare of their country is to make them partakers in the government.

The American is a man of action, not of speculation.

The more I advanced in the study of American society, the more I perceived that the equality of conditions is the fundamental fact from which all others seem to be derived.