Alexis de Tocqueville Quotes
The happy and powerful do not go into exile, and there are no surer guarantees of equality among men than poverty and misfortune.
Tocqueville, Alexis de. Democracy in America. Translated by Henry Reeve, vol. 1, Saunders and Otley, 1835, p. 32.
He was trying to get the Democratic Presidential Nomination.
The term “rugged individualism” was used at the time be very conservatives and the very wealthy to describe business leladers with words that had very good public connotations. They argued that it would be undesirable to curtail their individualism that was so important by any government regulations or laws that would limit what the business leaders could do. However, the reality was that these very successful and powerful “rugged individualists” had regimented most everyone else—employees, consumers, and small businessmen who might sell them services or products. To Tugwell, if the wealthy and powerful few had no restrictions on their individualism, there would be precious little individualism for most of society. He sought a balance of regulating the individualism and prerogatives of the few somewhat in order to allow the vast majority of people to be able to have individuality as well.
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.
