Alexis de Tocqueville Quotes

The best laws cannot make a constitution work in spite of morals; morals can turn the worst laws to advantage.

What is law? Is it what is on the books, or what is actually enacted and obeyed in a society? Or is law what must be enacted and obeyed, whether or not it is on the books, if things are to go right?

The law functions as formal embodiment of a moral code, not as free-standing substitute for it.

A nation,” he heard himself say, “consists of its laws. A nation does not consist of its situation at a given time. If an individual’s morals are situational, that individual is without morals. If a nation’s laws are situational, that nation has no laws, and soon isn’t a nation.

Any rule, not existing in the nature of things, or that is not permanent, universal and inflexible in its application, is no law, according to any correct definition of the term law.

The most celebrated system of jurisprudence known to the world begins, as it ends, with a Code.

There is not, in the whole compass of human affairs, so noble a spectacle as that which is displayed in the progress of jurisprudence; where we may contemplate the cautious and unwearied exertion of a succession of wise men, through a long course of ages, withdrawing every case, as it arises, from the dangerous power of discretion, and subjecting it to inflexible rules.

There is nothing certain in the principles of jurisprudence.

How a constitution is written can sometimes matter almost as much as what it contains.

Every constitutional standard is engaged in difficult but important line-drawing.

I like the law. I like the part that's about reasoning, about persuasion, about telling stories, about trying to build structures that fall within rules.

The first requisite of civilization, therefore, is that of justice — that is, the assurance that a law once made will not be broken in favour of an individual. This implies nothing as to the ethical value of such a law.

Laws are not made like lime-twigs or nets, to catch everything that toucheth them; but rather like sea-marks, to guide from shipwreck the ignorant passenger.

My constitution was destroyed long ago; now I am living under the bylaws.

Like other high subjects, the Law gives no ground to common sense.

The man-made laws have been made by men who have not perceived the final goal towards which they are making. And that is why it is so important to insist upon the final thing first, and then all the regulations, all the disciplines, will follow.

I told him that I thought it was law logic - an artificial system of reasoning, exclusively used in Courts of justice, but good for nothing anywhere else.

It is recorded how towards the end of the eighteenth century a Muslim visitor to England was taken to see the House of Commons at work. He later wrote of his astonishment at finding the that the British Parliament actually made laws and fixed punishments for their infraction - because unlike Muslims the English had not accepted a divine law revealed from heaven and therefore had to resort to such unsatisfactory expedients. Muslims still understand the expression 'the rule of law' very differently than do most Westerners.

Laws, in their most general signification, are the necessary relations derived from the nature of things.

The law is a sort of hocus-pocus science.

I have always loved the law. It is the very foundation of our great country. It's the exceptional foundation of America.

The conscience of this nation is the Constitution.

Law is the ultimate science.

Without question, the court does play a vital role in our constitutional system.

I love prudence very little, if it is not moral.