America is a land of wonders, in which everything is in constant motion and every change seems an improvement.
Alexis de TocquevilleOf all nations, those submit to civilization with the most difficulty which habitually live by the chase.
Alexis de TocquevilleFreedom sees in religion the companion of its struggles and its triumphs, the cradle of its infancy, the divine source of its rights. It considers religion as the safeguard of mores; and mores as the guarantee of laws and the pledge of its duration.
Alexis de TocquevilleSo many of my thoughts and feelings are shared by the English that England has turned into a second native land of the mind for me.
Alexis de TocquevilleIt is certain that despotism ruins individuals by preventing them from producing wealth much more than by depriving them of what they have already produced; it dries up the source of riches, while it usually respects acquired property. Freedom, on the contrary, produces far more goods than it destroys; and the nations which are favored by free institutions invariably find that their resources increase even more rapidly than their taxes.
Alexis de TocquevilleI shall not fear to say that the doctrine of self-interest rightly understood seems to me of all the philosophic theories the most appropriate to the needs of men in our time, and that I see in it the most powerful guarantee against themselves that remains to them. The minds of the moralists of our day ought to turn, therefore, principally toward it. Even should they judge it imperfect, they would still have to adopt it as necessary.
Alexis de Tocqueville