Alexis de Tocqueville World Quotations

As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: how much money will it bring in?

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.

It is odd to watch with what feverish ardour Americans pursue prosperity, ever tormented by the shadowy suspicion that they might not have chosen the shortest route to get it. They cleave to the things of this world as if assured they will never die, and yet rush to snatch any that comes within their reach, as if they expected to stop living before relishing them. Death steps in, in the end, and stops them, before they have grown tired of this futile pursuit of that complete felicity which always escapes them.

It is easier for the world to accept a simple lie than a complex truth.

I studied the Koran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Muhammad

The world belongs to those with the most energy.

What is understood by republican government in the United States is the slow and quiet action of society upon itself.

Of all nations, those submit to civilization with the most difficulty which habitually live by the chase.

The people reign over the American political world as God rules over the universe. It is the cause and the end of all things; everything rises out of it and is absorbed back into it.

We need a new political science for a new world.

European Christianity has allowed itself to be intimately united with the powers of this world. Now that these powers are falling, it is as if it were buried under their ruins.

Righteous women in their circle of influence, beginning in the home, can turn the world around.