Alexis de Tocqueville Quotes
I think that democratic communities have a natural taste for freedom: left to themselves, they will seek it, cherish it, and view any privation of it with regret. But for equality, their passion is ardent, insatiable, incessant, invincible: they call for equality in freedom; and if they cannot obtain that, they still call for equality in slavery.
De Tocqueville was generally concerned about what he saw as an inherent conflict between freedom and equality. Efforts to produce equality can lead in some cases to impingements on some freedoms or rights. Unlimited free rights can produce inequality and a de facto autocracy. Even in modern times America is struggling to find a proper balance.
Alexis de Tocqueville, 1805-1859, French Foreign Minister & Writer, Democracy in America, Volume II, 1840
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He is supportive of the United Nations in the present configuration where it has no governmental power but is a forum for international diplomacy.
In the election of 1800, the Jeffersonian republicans were pitted against the John Adams Federalists. The latter had seen the revolution as against the excesses of England and King George and not necessarily against the notion of a class society where government served the interests of the upper class—a political battle that is still with us to some extent. The Jewish religion generally recognizes no right of theocratic authority of one man over others with all to follow the laws of God, was theologically very republican. Rabbis were teachers and had no theological or civil authority. To Nones and many other Jews the Jeffersonian ideals were very close to their religious and cultural tradition and to the extent that there has been a party of the classes and a party of the masses, most Jews had gravitated to the latter with the exception of merchants, bankers and others whose economic interests were with the right of center party.
Although Holland was more egalitarian and fairer than most nations of Europe, it was not quite as desirable as Diderot described it. He only visited a part of Holland that was the most educated and affluent.
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.
