I should have loved freedom, I believe, at all times, but in the time in which we live I am ready to worship it.
Democracy in America - Volume 2, Página 397 http://books.google.com.br/books?id=n1QPAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA397, Alexis de Tocqueville - Sever and Francis, 1864
Obras
Da Democracia na América
Alexis De TocquevilleAlexis De Tocqueville Frases famosas
“Quando o passado não ilumina o futuro, o espírito vive em trevas.”
Le passé n'éclairant plus l'avenir, l'esprit marche dans les ténèbres.
De la démocratie en Amérique ... et augmentée ... d'un examen ... - Volumes 3-4, Página 340 http://books.google.com.br/books?id=xRITAAAAYAAJ&pg=RA1-PA340, Alexis de Tocqueville - 1848
Il y a aujourd'hui sur la terre deux grands peuples qui, partis de points différents, semblent s'avancer vers le même but: ce sont les Russes et les Anglo-Américains. Tous deux ont grandi dans l'obscurité; et tandis que les regards des hommes étaient occupés ailleurs, ils se sont placés tout à coup au premier rang des nations, et le monde a appris presque en même temps leur naissance et leur grandeur. Tous les autres peuples paraissent avoir atteint à peu près les limites qu'a tracées la nature, et n'avoir plus qu'à conserver; mais eux sont en croissance : tous les autres sont arrêtés ou n'avancent qu'avec mille efforts; eux seuls marchent d'un pas aisé et rapide dans une carrière dont l’oeil ne saurait encore apercevoir la borne.
Œuvres complètes d'Alexis de Tocqueville - Volume 2, Página 430 http://books.google.com.br/books?id=NWpmbs5XfwoC&pg=RA4-PA430, Alexis de Tocqueville, Marie Motley Clérel de de Tocqueville - M. Lévy frères, 1864
Despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot. Religion is much more necessary in the republics which they set forth in glowing colors, than in the morarchy which they attack; and it is more needed in democratic republics than in any others. How is it possible that society should escape destruction if the moral tie is not strengthened in proportion as the political tie is relaxed? And what can be done with a people who are their own masters if they are not submissive to the Divinity?
Democracy in America - página 288 http://books.google.com.br/books?id=DUAvAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA288, Alexis de Tocqueville, Henry Reeve, Edição 2, G. Adlard, 1838, 464 páginas
citado em "Revista brasileira de estudos políticos", Edições 60-61, Universidade de Minas Gerais - Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, 1985
Atribuídas
Démocratie et socialisme n'ont rien en commun sauf un mot, l'égalité. Mais pendant que la démocratie cherche l'égalité dans la liberté, le socialisme cherche l'égalité dans la restriction et la servitude.
Alexis de Tocqueville como citado em Commentaire, Edições 115-116 - página 801 https://books.google.com.br/books?hl=pt-BR&id=sgkTAQAAMAAJ&dq=tocqueville+D%C3%A9mocratie+et+socialisme+n%27ont+rien+en+commun+sauf+un+mot%2C+l%27%C3%A9galit%C3%A9.&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=+%22D%C3%A9mocratie+et+socialisme+n%27ont+rien+en+commun+sauf+un+mot%2C+l%27%C3%A9galit%C3%A9.%22, Editora Julliard., 2006
Atribuídas
Je serais, pour ma part, porté à croire la liberté moins nécessaire dans les grandes choses que dans les moindres, si je pensais qu'on pût jamais être assuré de l'une, sans posséder l'autre.
De la démocratie en Amérique - Volume 4 - Página 317 https://books.google.com.br/books?id=6PM_AAAAcAAJ&pg=PA317, Alexis de Tocqueville - C. Gosselin, 1811
Alexis De Tocqueville: Frases em inglês
12 September 1848, "Discours prononcé à l'assemblée constituante le 12 Septembre 1848 sur la question du droit au travail", Oeuvres complètes, vol. IX, p. 546 https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Tocqueville_-_%C5%92uvres_compl%C3%A8tes,_%C3%A9dition_1866,_volume_9.djvu/564; Translation (from Hayek, The Road to Serfdom):
Original text:
La démocratie étend la sphère de l'indépendance individuelle, le socialisme la resserre. La démocratie donne toute sa valeur possible à chaque homme, le socialisme fait de chaque homme un agent, un instrument, un chiffre. La démocratie et le socialisme ne se tiennent que par un mot, l'égalité; mais remarquez la différence : la démocratie veut l'égalité dans la liberté, et le socialisme veut l'égalité dans la gêne et dans la servitude.
1840s
“Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith.”
Original text: À côté de ces hommes religieux, j'en découvre d'autres dont les regards sont tournés vers la terre plutôt que vers le ciel ; partisans de la liberté, non seulement parce qu'ils voient en elle l'origine des plus nobles vertus, mais surtout parce qu'ils la considèrent comme la source des plus grands biens, ils désirent sincèrement assurer son empire et faire goûter aux hommes ses bienfaits : je comprends que ceux-là vont se hâter d'appeler la religion à leur aide, car ils doivent savoir qu'on ne peut établir le règne de la liberté sans celui des mœurs, ni fonder les mœurs sans les croyances ; mais ils ont aperçu la religion dans les rangs de leurs adversaires, c'en est assez pour eux : les uns l'attaquent, et les autres n'osent la défendre.
Introduction.
Fonte: Democracy in America, Volume I (1835)
Contexto: By the side of these religious men I discern others whose looks are turned to the earth more than to Heaven; they are the partisans of liberty, not only as the source of the noblest virtues, but more especially as the root of all solid advantages; and they sincerely desire to extend its sway, and to impart its blessings to mankind. It is natural that they should hasten to invoke the assistance of religion, for they must know that liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith; but they have seen religion in the ranks of their adversaries, and they inquire no further; some of them attack it openly, and the remainder are afraid to defend it.
Fonte: Recollections on the French Revolution
“In a democracy, the people get the government they deserve.”
It was Joseph de Maistre who wrote in 1811 "Every nation gets the government it deserves."
Misattributed
This is a variant expression of a sentiment which is often attributed to Tocqueville or Alexander Fraser Tytler, but the earliest known occurrence is as an unsourced attribution to Tytler in "This is the Hard Core of Freedom" by Elmer T. Peterson in The Daily Oklahoman (9 December 1951): "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy."
Misattributed
Variante: The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money.
“Despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot.”
Fonte: Democracy in America, Volume I (1835), Chapter XV-IXX, Chapter XVII.
Contexto: Despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot. How is it possible that society should escape destruction if the moral tie is not strengthened in proportion as the political tie is relaxed? And what can be done with a people who are their own masters if they are not submissive to the Deity?
“They are not disinterested, but they are gentle.”
Book Three, Chapter I.
Democracy in America, Volume II (1840), Book Three
Contexto: In democratic ages men rarely sacrifice themselves for another, but they show a general compassion for all the human race. One never sees them inflict pointless suffering, and they are glad to relieve the sorrows of others when they can do so without much trouble to themselves. They are not disinterested, but they are gentle.
“The last thing abandoned by a party is its phraseology”
France Before The Consulate, Chapter I: "How the Republic was ready to accept a master", in Memoir, Letters, and Remains, Vol I (1862), p. 266 http://books.google.com/books?id=ilm0jHyQQM0C&pg=PA266&vq=%22last+thing+abandoned%22&source=gbs_search_r&cad=1_1
Variant translation: The last thing a political party gives up is its vocabulary. This is because, in party politics as in other matters, it is the crowd who dictates the language, and the crowd relinquishes the ideas it has been given more readily than the words it has learned.
As quoted in The Viking book of Aphorisms : A Personal Selection (1962) by W. H. Auden, and Louis Kronenberger, p. 306.
Variant translation: The last thing that a party abandons is its language.
1850s and later
Contexto: The last thing abandoned by a party is its phraseology, because among political parties, as elsewhere, the vulgar make the language, and the vulgar abandon more easily the ideas that have been instilled into it than the words that it has learnt.
Book Three, Chapter I.
Democracy in America, Volume II (1840), Book Three
Contexto: In democratic ages men rarely sacrifice themselves for another, but they show a general compassion for all the human race. One never sees them inflict pointless suffering, and they are glad to relieve the sorrows of others when they can do so without much trouble to themselves. They are not disinterested, but they are gentle.
Book Two, Chapter V.
Democracy in America, Volume II (1840), Book Two
Contexto: Americans of all ages, all stations of life, and all types of disposition are forever forming associations... In democratic countries knowledge of how to combine is the mother of all other forms of knowledge; on its progress depends that of all the others.
Letter to Arthur de Gobineau, 22 October 1843, Tocqueville Reader, p. 229 http://books.google.com/books?id=JhEVK0UMgFMC&pg=PA229&vq=studied+the+koran&dq=%22few+religions+in+the+world+as+deadly+to+men+as+that+of+Muhammad%22+-tocqueville&source=gbs_search_s&cad=0
Original text: J’ai beaucoup étudié le Koran à cause surtout de notre position vis-à-vis des populations musulmanes en Algérie et dans tout l’Orient. Je vous avoue que je suis sorti de cette étude avec la conviction qu’il y avait eu dans le monde, à tout prendre, peu de religions aussi funestes aux hommes que celle de Mahomet. [...] Elle est, à mon sens, la principale cause de la décadence aujourd’hui si visible du monde musulman, et quoique moins absurde que le polythéisme antique, ses tendances sociales et politiques étant, à mon avis, infiniment plus à redouter, je la regarde relativement au paganisme lui-même comme une décadence plutôt que comme un progrès (Wikisource)
1840s
Contexto: 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. So far as I can see, it is the principal cause of the decadence so visible today in the Muslim world and, though less absurd than the polytheism of old, its social and political tendencies are in my opinion to be feared, and I therefore regard it as a form of decadence rather than a form of progress in relation to paganism itself.
Book Three, Chapter XIX.
Democracy in America, Volume II (1840), Book Two
Contexto: The First thing that strikes a traveler in the United States is the innumerable multitude of those who seek to emerge from their original condition; and the second is the rarity of lofty ambition to be observed in the midst of the universally ambitious stir of society. No Americans are devoid of a yearning desire to rise, but hardly any appear to entertain hopes of great magnitude or to pursue very lofty aims. All are constantly seeking to acquire property, power, and reputation.
De la supériorité des mœurs sur les lois (1831) Oeuvres complètes, vol. VIII, p. 286 https://books.google.de/books?id=yrMFAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA286&dq=meilleures.
Original text:
Les meilleures lois ne peuvent faire marcher une constitution en dépit des mœurs ; les mœurs tirent parti des pires lois. C'est là une vérité commune, mais à laquelle mes études me ramènent sans cesse. Elle est placée dans mon esprit comme un point central. Je l'aperçois au bout de toutes mes idées.
1830s
Contexto: The best laws cannot make a constitution work in spite of morals; morals can turn the worst laws to advantage. That is a commonplace truth, but one to which my studies are always bringing me back. It is the central point in my conception. I see it at the end of all my reflections.
According to Michael A. Ledeen, this line has been falsely attributed to Tocqueville by Dwight Eisenhower, Bill Clinton, Colin Powell, Ross Perot and Pat Buchanan. See Tocqueville on American Character (2001), p. 25 http://books.google.com/books?id=gFjQUXYsSR0C&pg=PA25. Hillary Clinton in her acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention (July 29, 2016), said, without attribution, "America is great because America is good."
Misattributed
Book Three, Chapter XXI.
Democracy in America, Volume II (1840), Book Three
“everybody feels the evil, but no one has courage or energy enough to seek the cure”
Fonte: Democracy in America
Original text: On voit que l'histoire est une galerie de tableaux où il y a peu d'originaux et beaucoup de copies.
Variant translation: History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.
Old Regime (1856), p. 88 http://books.google.com/books?id=N50aibeL8BAC&pg=PA88&vq=%22history,+it+is+easily+perceived%22&source=gbs_search_r&cad=1_1
1850s and later
Book Three, Chapter XXII.
Democracy in America, Volume II (1840), Book Three
Original text: Les despotes eux-mêmes ne nient pas que la liberté ne soit excellente ; seulement ils ne la veulent que pour eux-mêmes, et ils soutiennent que tous les autres en sont tout à fait indignes. Ainsi, ce n'est pas sur l'opinion qu'on doit avoir de la liberté qu'on diffère, mais sur l'estime plus au moins grande qu'on fait des hommes ; et c'est ainsi qu'on peut dire d'une façon rigoureuse que le goût qu'on montre pour le gouvernement absolu est dans le rapport exact du mépris qu'on professe pour son pays.
Ancien Regime and the Revolution (L'Ancien Régime et la Révolution) (fourth edition, 1858), de Tocqueville, tr. Gerald Bevan, Penguin UK (2008), Author’s Foreword :
1850s and later
Variante: We can state with conviction, therefore, that a man's support for absolute government is in direct proportion to the contempt he feels for his country.
Contexto: Even despots accept the excellence of liberty. The simple truth is that they wish to keep it for themselves and promote the idea that no one else is at all worthy of it. Thus, our opinion of liberty does not reveal our differences but the relative value which we place on our fellow man. We can state with conviction, therefore, that a man's support for absolute government is in direct proportion to the contempt he feels for his country.
Fonte: Democracy in America, Volume I (1835), Chapter I-V, Chapter II.