Alexis de Tocqueville Quotes

A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward.

The danger to the state lies not in the intrusion of new thought but in the effort to stubbornly maintain the old state thought.

The people generally get accustomed to the established order of things and begin to tremble at the very idea of a change. It is this lethargical spirit that needs be replaced by the revolutionary spirit. Otherwise degeneration gains the upper hand and the whole humanity is led stray by the reactionary forces. Such a state of affairs leads to stagnation and paralysis in human progress. The spirit of Revolution should always permeate the soul of humanity, so that the reactionary forces may not accumulate to check its eternal onward march.

Progress is never accepted by everybody.

All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone, you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone, you leave it to a torrent of change.

I think some fans want everything to stay they same because they want to stay the same.

The reason men oppose progress is not that they hate progress, but that they love inertia.

When men are easy in their circumstances, they are naturally enemies to innovations.

People are very open-minded about new things - as long as they're exactly like the old ones.

I have read their platform, and though I think there are some unsound places in it, I can stand upon it pretty well. But I see nothing in it both new and valuable. "What is valuable is not new, and what is new is not valuable.

Conservatism, I believe, is mainly due to want of imagination.

There is danger in reckless change; but greater danger in blind conservatism.

The French higher education system has not adapted to this revolutionary period. [It] rewards people for their capacity to follow the path that is open to them. It does not encourage people to rebel or to develop their character.

I do not fear … rupture—rupture with habits of thought, with ideas, with behaviors of the past that have prevented us from advancing, from grasping the future between our two arms … I want a rupture with conformity … with half heartedness … with conservatism … with immobility. This rupture I believe necessary. This rupture I have betrothed myself to. This rupture the French people have approved. This rupture I will perform.

There is a snail-paced gait for the advance of new ideas on the general mind under which we must acquiesce. A forty years' experience of popular assemblies has taught me that you must give them time for every step you take. If too hard pushed, they balk, and the machine retrogrades.

Innovation never comes from the established institutions.

We [Republicans] don’t need any new ideas.

I've never believed that Things Should Continue As They Are.

When the world moves forward too fast for some people, they try to pull us all back with their fear.

The soft-minded man always fears change. He feels security in the status quo, and he has an almost morbid fear of the new. For him, the greatest pain is the pain of a new idea.

We accept the verdict of the past until the need for change cries out loudly enough to force upon us a choice between the comforts of inertia and the irksomeness of action.

At every crossway on the path that leads to the future, each progressive spirit is opposed by a thousand men appointed to guard the past. Let us have no fear that the fair towers of former days be sufficiently defended. The least that the most timid among us can do is not to add to the immense dead weight that nature drags along.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it' is the slogan of the complacent, the arrogant or the scared. It's an excuse for inaction, a call to non-arms.

There's one thing worse than change and that's the status quo.

Tradition was safety; change was danger.