Alexis de Tocqueville Quotes

If you want to say something and have people listen then you have to wear a mask. If you want to be honest then you have to live a lie.

Listening is terribly important if you want to understand anything about people. You listen to what they say and how they say it, what they share and what they are reticent about, what they tell truthfully and what they lie about, what they hope for and what they fear, what they are proud of, what they are ashamed of. If you don't pay attention to other people, how can you understand their choices through time and how their stories come out?

Not everyone knows how to be silent or to leave in good time. It happens that even people of good breeding fail to notice that their presence provokes in the weary or preoccupied host a feeling akin to hatred, and that this feeling is tensely concealed and covered up with lies.

I'm quite a good reader of people; I like to meet people, and I can tell if they're lying or not.

"There's little value in seeking to find reasons for why people do what they do, or feel the way they feel. Hatred is a most pernicious thing, finding root in any kind of soil. It feeds on itself." "With words."

People more easily tolerate opposition than a contradiction

Animals don't know as much about jealousy as people, but they're not ignorant of it, either.

People only worry about the uncanny for about a week; that's the end of their attention span. After that, suspicions turn into shtick.

Truth is not always the best basis for happiness. There are certain lies which may constitute a far better and more secure foundation of happiness. There are people who perish when their eyes are opened.

I've learned not to be surprised by what people do no more.

Once you start thinking about the lies people tell when they don't know they're telling them, the truths people reveal when they think they're lying, then you can start to build a world.

You show you care, you die.You show you fear, you die.You show nothing, maybe you live.

Something I learned long ago. It is not necessary to know what a person is afraid of. It is enough to know the person is afraid.

When humans act like animals, they become the most dangerous of animals to themselves and other humans, and this is because of another critical difference between humans and animals: Whereas animals are usually restrained by the limits of physical appetites, humans have mental appetites that can be far more gross and capacious than physical ones. Only humans squander and hoard, murder and pillage because of notions.

When kindness has left people, even for a few moments, we become afraid of them, as if their reason had left them.

Sometimes people's reactions tell more about themselves.

What's wrong with people?" she says, almost too quiet for me to hear. "Were they born with parts missing or did it fall out somewhere along the way?

The reason why most people are frustrated is because a lie cannot be turned into a truth.

The ability to understand people is one of the greatest assets anyone can ever have.

Lying to other people is fine and usually funny, but lying to yourself is tacky.

People get annoyed when you try to debug them.

Clever people are always the best conversations lexicon.

Life teaches us that human thought almost never walks hand in hand with logic, and it is usually counterproductive to raise the point.

people are doing the best that they can from their own level of consciousness.

Let us consider that we are all insane. It will explain us to each other. It will unriddle many riddles