Toqueville

I finished "Democracy in America" tonight. I had feared it would be ponderous and boring. Instead I found it quite readable and inciteful. No where did I find his most famous quote: "America is great, because America is good ..." (Turns out he apparently never said that!) He did say a lot of other quotable things, however. A few examples:

"There is, in fact, a manly and lawful passion for equality which excites men to wish all to be powerful and honored. This passion tends to elevate the humble to the rank of the great; but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level, and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom."

"There is no country in the world in which everything can be provided for by the laws, or in which political institutions can prove a substitute for common sense and public morality."

"In the United States the persons who engage in the perplexities of political life are individuals of very moderate pretensions. The pursuit of wealth generally diverts men of great talents and of great passions from the pursuit of power; and it very frequently happens that a man does not undertake to direct the fortune of the State until he has discovered his incompetence to conduct his own affairs."

"The disastrous influence which popular authority may sometimes exercise upon the finances of a State, was very clearly seen in some of the democratic republics of antiquity, in which the public treasures was exhausted in order to relieve indigent citizens, or to supply the games and theatrical amusements of the populace."

"While the law permits the Americans to do what they please, religion prevents them from conceiving, and forbids them to commit what is rash or unjust. ... I do not know whether all the Americans have a sincere faith in their religion; for who can search the human heart? but I am certain that they hold it to be indispensable to the maintenance of republican institutions. This opinion is not peculiar to a class of citizens or to a party, but it belongs to the whole nation, and to every rank of society."

"Despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot. ... How is it possible that society should escape destruction if the moral tie be not strengthened in proportion as the political tie is relaxed? and what can be done with a people which is its own master, if it be not submissive to the Divinity?"

"That Providence has given to every human being the degree of reason necessary to direct himself in the affairs which interest him exclusively; such is the grand maxim upon which civil and political society rests in the United States. The father of a family applies it to his children; the master to his servants; the township to its officers; the province to its townships; the State to the provinces; the Union to the States; and when extended to the nation, it becomes the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people."

Finally, I found his closing comments particularly prescient:
"There are, at the present time, two great nations in the world, which seem to tend towards the same end, although they started from different points: I allude to the Russians and the Americans. ...
"The American struggles against the natural obstacles which oppose him; the adversaries of the Russian are men: the former combats the wilderness and savage life; the latter, civilization with all its weapons and its arts: the conquests of the one are therefore gained by the ploughshare; those of the other, by the sword. The Anglo-American relies upon personal interest to accomplish his ends, and gives free scope to the unguided exertions and common sense of the citizens; the Russian centres all the authority of society in a single arm: the principal instrument of the former is freedom; of the latter, servitude. Their starting-point is different, and their courses are not the same; yet each of them seems to be marked out by the will of Heaven to sway the destinies of half the globe."