Alexis de Tocqueville Quotes
If a [democratic] society displays less brilliance than an aristocracy, there will also be less wretchedness; pleasures will be less outrageous and wellbeing will be shared by all; the sciences will be on a smaller scale but ignorance will be less common; opinions will be less vigorous and habits gentler; you will notice more vices and fewer crimes.
Tocqueville, Alexis de. Democracy in America. Translated by George Lawrence, Harper & Row, 1966, p. 14.
When Tocqueville studied the United States, it was inferior to the England and the other European aristocracies in science, the arts, literature, philosophy, theology and most other intellectual fields of culture and human endeavor. He did not have the opportunity to observe the interactive, long term effects of freedom, democracy, and public education. The US would become the dominant cultural nation of the world, with the English language in far greater usage than at the height of the British Empire. American Science, literature, art developed with more and more people participating in and being educated for those areas and were free to create without the restraints of government or even cultural norms. American creativity was demonstrated by more new religions being created that than in any other nation on earth.
He often spoke in the North to try and explain the virtues of the “New South” with an idea of diminishing the stigma the South has borne every since the founding of the nation. In this particular speech, His audience included J. P. Morgan and H. M. Flagler at New York’s Delmonico's Restaurant at a meeting of the New England Society of New York. He gave a picture of a middle class society, but the reality was there was a very small middle class in the South at that time. Most farmers were tenant farmers and didn’t even own their own land. And the 50 homes for every palace were far below the standard with which the North had become familiar.
Alexis Charles Henri Clérel, comte de Tocqueville, colloquially known as Tocqueville (/ˈtɒkvɪl, ˈtoʊk-/), was a French aristocrat, diplomat, political scientist, political philosopher and historian. He is best known for his works Democracy in America (appearing in two volumes, 1835 and 1840) and The Old Regime and the Revolution (1856). In both, he analysed the improved living standards and social conditions of individuals as well as their relationship to the market and state in Western societies. Democracy in America was published after Tocqueville's travels in the United States and is today considered an early work of sociology and political science.
