 Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom. |
| When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness. |
| There are two things which a democratic people will always find very difficult - to begin a war and to end it. |
| Those that despise people will never get the best out of others and themselves. |
| In America the majority raises formidable barriers around the liberty of opinion; within these barriers an author may write what he pleases, but woe to him if he goes beyond them. |
| The main business of religions is to purify, control, and restrain that excessive and exclusive taste for well-being which men acquire in times of equality. |
| There is hardly a pioneer's hut which does not contain a few odd volumes of Shakespeare. I remember reading the feudal drama of Henry V for the first time in a log cabin. |
| I cannot help fearing that men may reach a point where they look on every new theory as a danger, every innovation as a toilsome trouble, every social advance as a first step toward revolution, and that they may absolutely refuse to move at all. |
| In a revolution, as in a novel, the most difficult part to invent is the end. |
| In politics shared hatreds are almost always the basis of friendships. |
| A democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it. |
| The French want no-one to be their superior. The English want inferiors. The Frenchman constantly raises his eyes above him with anxiety. The Englishman lowers his beneath him with satisfaction. |
| The whole life of an American is passed like a game of chance, a revolutionary crisis, or a battle. |
| Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith. |
| It is the dissimilarities and inequalities among men which give rise to the notion of honor; as such differences become less, it grows feeble; and when they disappear, it will vanish too. |
| The genius of democracies is seen not only in the great number of new words introduced but even more in the new ideas they express. |
| What is most important for democracy is not that great fortunes should not exist, but that great fortunes should not remain in the same hands. In that way there are rich men, but they do not form a class. |
| Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude. |
| There are many men of principle in both parties in America, but there is no party of principle. |
| Nothing seems at first sight less important than the outward form of human actions, yet there is nothing upon which men set more store: they grow used to everything except to living in a society which has not their own manners. |
