Alexis de Tocqueville Quotes

I am no leveller; I look upon an artificial equality as equally pernicious with a factitious aristocracy; both depressing the energies and checking the enterprise of a nation.

Subordination tends greatly to human happiness. Were we all upon an equality, we should have no other enjoyment than mere animal pleasure.

I don't believe in social equality, and they know it.

Aristocracy is naturally abhorrent to me, and adored equality is my idol.

In this country there is no rank but rank mutton.

Those who are believed to be most abject and humble are usually most ambitious and envious.

Every society naturally divides itself into classes. The author of nature has bestowed on some greater capacities than on others--birth, education, talents and wealth, create distinctions among men as visible and of as much influence as titles, stars and garters. In every society, men of this class will command a superior degree of respect--and if the government is so constituted as to admit but few to exercise the powers of it, it will, according to the natural course of things, be in their hands.

On the battlefield, there is no distinction between upper and lower class.

If you try and level society, then nobody will do anything.

The prime culprit in causing contemporary social inequality seems to be merit.

We have been taught by experience the danger of the levelling spirit.

Distinction in society will always exist under every just government. Equality of talents, of education, or of wealth can not be produced by human institutions.

All men are created equal in one respect, at least, and that is their desire to be unequal.

Any organized social group is always a stratified social body. There has not been and does not exist any permanent social group which is "flat" and in which all members are equal.

Believe me, Sir, those who attempt to level never equalize. In all societies consisting of various descriptions of citizens, some description must be uppermost. The levelers, therefore, only change and pervert the natural order of things.

A Plowman on his knees is higher than a Gentleman on his legs.

I don't think equality is intrinsically valuable, meaning in and of itself. I'm not against inequality... if Bill Gates gets another hundred million dollars, it's no skin off my nose.

But in view of the constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here.

For many centuries Chinese society has been free of class distinctions such as are found even in advanced democracies.

Even the striving for equality by means of a directed economy can result only in an officially enforced inequality - an authoritarian determination of the status of each individual in the new hierarchical order.

I reject absolutely the idea that people should know their place, and know their class.

Those who are able to climb up the ladder will find ways to pull it up after them, or selectively lower it down to allow their friends, allies, and kin to scramble up. In other words: 'Who says meritocracy says oligarchy.'

It is the dissimilarities and inequalities among men which give rise to the notion of honor; as such differences become less, it grows feeble; and when they disappear, it will vanish too.

Class structures are a luxury that we cannot afford.

The problem is that the U.K. in essence is a feudal society. It's everyone in their place.