A nation may establish a system of free government, but without the spirit of municipal institutions it cannot have the spirit of liberty.
Although man has many points of resemblance with the brute creation, one characteristic is peculiar to himself--he improves....
And as to state religions, I have always held, that if they be sometimes of momentary service to the interests of political power, they always, sooner or later, become fatal to the Church.
But if the Supreme Court is ever composed of imprudent men or bad citizens, the Union may be plunged into anarchy or civil war.
But in the countries in which the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people ostensibly prevails, the censorship of the press is not only dangerous, but it is absurd.
Christianity, which has declared that all men are equal in the sight of God, will not refuse to acknowledge that all citizens are equal in the eye of the law.
Civilization is the result of a long social process which takes place in the same spot, and is handed down from one generation to another, each one profiting by the experience of the last.
Democracy loosens social ties, but it draws the ties of nature more tight; it brings kindred more closely together, whilst it places the various members of the community more widely apart.
Democratic governments may become violent and even cruel at certain periods of extreme effervescence or of great danger: but these crises will be rare and brief.
Despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot. Religion is much more...needed in democratic republics than in any others.
Elected magistrates do not make the American democracy flourish; it flourishes because the magistrates are elective.
For myself, when I feel the hand of power lie heavy on my brow, I care but little to know who oppresses me; and I am not the more disposed to pass beneath the yoke, because it is held out to me by the arms of a million of men.
Freedom engenders private animosities, but despotism gives birth to general indifference.
I am unacquainted with [the Creator's] designs, but I shall not cease to believe in them because I cannot fathom them, and I had rather mistrust my own capacity than his justice.
I doubt whether man can ever support at the same time complete religious independence and entire public freedom. And I am inclined to think, that if faith be wanting in him, he must serve; and if he be free, he must believe.
I hold it to be sufficiently demonstrated that universal suffrage is by no means a guarantee of the wisdom of the popular choice, and that, whatever its advantages may be, this is not one of them.
I know, without a special revelation, that the planets move in the orbits traced by the Creator's finger.
If Catholicism predisposes the faithful to obedience, it certainly does not prepare them for inequality; but the contrary may be said of Protestantism, which generally tends to make men independent, more than to render them equal.
If ever the free institutions of America are destroyed, that event may be attributed to the unlimited authority of the majority, which may at some future time urge the minorities to desperation, and oblige them to have recourse to physical force.
If kings and peoples had only had their true interests in view ever since the beginning of the world, the name of war would scarcely be known among mankind.
If you establish a censorship of the press, the tongue of the public speaker will still make itself heard, and you have only increased the mischief.
In despotic states men know not how to act, because they are told nothing; in democratic nations they often act at random, because nothing is to be left untold.
In the present age men are not very ready to die in defense of their opinions, but they are rarely inclined to change them; and there are fewer martyrs as well as fewer apostates.
In the United States...all that [a man] asks of the state is not to be disturbed in his toil, and to be secure of his earnings.
Independent nations have therefore a natural tendency to centralization, and confederations to dismemberment.
It cannot be absolutely or generally affirmed that the greatest danger of the present age is license or tyranny, anarchy or despotism. Both are equally to be feared....
It very frequently happens that a man does not undertake to direct the fortune of the state until he has discovered his incompetence to conduct his own affairs.
Next to hating their enemies, men are most inclined to flatter them.
Our contemporaries [have] two conflicting passions; they want to be led, and they wish to remain free.... They strive to satisfy them both at once.
Religion is no less the companion of liberty in all its battles and its triumphs; the cradle of its infancy, and the divine source of its claims.
Servitude cannot be complete if the press is free: the press is the chiefest democratic instrument of freedom.
Since religion has lost its empire over the souls of men, the most prominent boundary which divided good from evil is overthrown....
Society can only exist when a great number of men consider a great number of things in the same point of view....
The Americans...frequently allow themselves to be borne away, far beyond the bound of reason, by a sudden passion or a hasty opinion, and they sometimes gravely commit strange absurdities.
The division of property has lessened the distance which separated the rich from the poor; but it would seem that the nearer they draw to each other, the greater is their mutual hatred....
The French codes are often difficult of comprehension, but they can be read by every one; nothing, on the other hand, can be more impenetrable to the uninitiated than a legislation founded upon precedents.
The most durable monument of human labor is that which recalls the wretchedness and nothingness of man.
The nations which are favored by free institutions invariably find that their resources increase even more rapidly than their taxes.
The reader will undoubtedly have remarked the preamble of these enactments: in America religion is the road to knowledge, and the observance of the divine laws leads man to civil freedom.
The revolution of the United States was the result of a mature and dignified taste for freedom, and not of a vague or ill-defined craving for independence.
The safeguard of morality is religion, and morality is the best security of law and the surest pledge of freedom.
There are two things which a democratic people will always find very difficult: to begin a war, and to end it.
There is no country in the world in which everything can be provided for by the laws, or in which political institutions can prove a substitute for common sense and public morality.
There is...a close bond and necessary relation between...freedom and productive industry. This proposition is generally true of all nations, but especially of democratic nations.
Town-meetings are to liberty what primary schools are to science; they bring it within the people's reach, they teach men how to use and how to enjoy it.
We shall see hereafter that in America the real strength of the country is vested in the provincial far more than in the federal government.
When hereditary wealth, the privileges of rank, and the prerogatives of birth have ceased to be, and when every man derives his strength from himself alone, it becomes evident that the chief cause of disparity between the fortunes of men is the mind.
When I see that the right and the means of absolute command are conferred on a people or upon a king, upon an aristocracy or a democracy, a monarchy or a republic, I recognize the germ of tyranny, and I journey onward to a land of more hopeful institutions.
Wherever the poor direct public affairs and dispose of the national resources, it appears certain that, as they profit by the expenditure of the state, they are apt to augment that expenditure.