Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville is a well-known and popular book that looks at both America and its style of governance.
More about it can be gleaned from the National Endowment for the Humanities website:
“In 1831, an ambitious and unusually perceptive twenty-five-year-old French aristocrat, Alexis de Tocqueville, visited the United States. His nine-month sojourn led to the writing of Democracy in America, universally regarded as one of the most influential books ever written.
The book is influential both for its study of American society in the Jacksonian period and for its analysis of democracy. In his introduction, Tocqueville writes: ‘In America, I saw more than America… I sought the image of democracy itself, with its inclinations, its character, its prejudices, and its passions. I wanted to know democracy, if only to know at least what we must hope or fear from it.'”
Some quotes from the book, compiled by Goodreads:
“Nothing is more wonderful than the art of being free, but nothing is harder to learn how to use than freedom.”
“Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith.”
“What good does it do me, after all, if an ever-watchful authority keeps an eye out to ensure that my pleasures will be tranquil and races ahead of me to ward off all danger, sparing me the need even to think about such things, if that authority, even as it removes the smallest thorns from my path, is also absolute master of my liberty and my life; if it monopolizes vitality and existence to such a degree that when it languishes, everything around it must also languish; when it sleeps, everything must also sleep; and when it dies, everything must also perish?
“everybody feels the evil, but no one has courage or energy enough to seek the cure”
“Society is endangered not by the great profligacy of a few, but by the laxity of morals amongst all.”
“When I refuse to obey an unjust law, I do not contest the right of the majority to command, but I simply appeal from the sovereignty of the people to the sovereignty of mankind.”
“The health of a democratic society may be measured by the quality of functions performed by private citizens.”
“As I see it, only God can be all-powerful without danger, because his wisdom and justice are always equal to his power. Thus there is no authority on earth so inherently worthy of respect, or invested with a right so sacred, that I would want to let it act without oversight or rule without impediment.”
“Men will not accept truth at the hands of their enemies, and truth is seldom offered to them by their friends”
“[N]ow that I am drawing to the close of this work, in which I have spoken of so many important things done by the Americans, to what the singular prosperity and growing strength of that people ought mainly to be attributed, I should reply: To the superiority of their women.”
Project Gutenberg offers free downloads and online reading of thousands of books. To read Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville online or to download your free copy:
CLICK HERE FOR VOLUME ONE
CLICK HERE FOR VOLUME TWO
The links will take you to the appropriate page on the Project Gutenberg website.
If you’ve already read this classic, what were your thoughts? Please share them in the comments section below.
-Kara
Beautiful Dangerous Freedom 