Alexis de Tocqueville Quotes
The enterprising spirit is gone when one goes South.
This is a very important quotation. In large part America's development to a great power was the result of American industry and enterprise. However, that characteristic among the Americans was rare in the South as de Tocqueville herein observes. This was one of the pernicious consequences of slavery. The Southern whites could live a very comfortable life without any ingenuity, innovation, hard work, passion or much effort of any kind. There was nothing that the South produced or created without slaves that anyone wanted or advanced the nation. Even after the Civil War and emancipation it took decades before the white Southerners began to adopt the enterprising behavior that the rest of America was known for and it would take until the 21st century for parts of the South the reach parity in this area with most of the rest of the nation.
Alexis de Tocqueville, 1805-1859, French Foreign Minister & Writer, Democracy in America, 1835
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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.
