I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America.

Amongst democratic nations men easily attain a certain equality of conditions: they can never attain the equality they desire. It perpetually retires from before them, yet without hiding itself from their sight, and in retiring draws them on. At every moment they think they are about to grasp it; it escapes at every moment from their hold. They are near enough to see its charms, but too far off to enjoy them; and before they have fully tasted its delights they die.

Slavery...dishonors labor. It introduces idleness into society, and with idleness, ignorance and pride, luxury and distress. It enervates the powers of the mind and benumbs the activity of man.

I have always noticed in politics how often men are ruined by having too good a memory.

But what most astonishes me in the United States, is not so much the marvelous grandeur of some undertakings, as the innumerable multitude of small ones.

Of all the countries of the world America is the one where the movement of thought and human industry is the most continuous and swift.

Laws are always unstable unless they are founded on the manners of a nation; and manners are the only durable and resisting power in a people.