In democracies, nothing is more great or more brilliant than commerce: it attracts the attention of the public, and fills the imagination of the multitude; all energetic passions are directed towards it.

The Americans never use the word peasant, because they have no idea of the class which that term denotes; the ignorance of more remote ages, the simplicity of rural life, and the rusticity of the villager have not been preserved among them; and they are alike unacquainted with the virtues, the vices, the coarse habits, and the simple graces of an early stage of civilization.

Comfort becomes a goal when distinctions of rank are abolished and privileges destroyed.

It profits me but little, after all, that a vigilant authority always protects the tranquility of my pleasures and constantly averts all dangers from my path, without my care or concern, if this same authority is the absolute master of my liberty and my life.

[R]eligion cannot share the material strength of the rulers without being burdened with some of the animosity roused against them.

How could a society escape destruction if, when political ties are relaxed, moral ties are not tightened, and what can be done with a people master of itself if it not subject to God?

One of the happiest consequences of the absence of government...is the development of individual strength that inevitably follows.