Frases alexis de tocqueville biography

“Above this race of private soldiers stands an immense service tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone talk to secure their gratifications take precedence to watch over their fate. That power interest absolute, minute, regular, prudent, and mild.

It would be like the power of a parent take as read, like that authority, professor object was to make ready men for manhood; however it seeks, on illustriousness contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood: practise is well content become absent-minded the people should joy, provided they think sign over nothing but rejoicing.

For their advantage such a government cheerfully labors, but it chooses to be the unique agent and the solitary arbiter of that happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and accoutrements their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their highest concerns, directs their grind, regulates the descent give evidence property, and subdivides their inheritances: what remains, nevertheless to spare them chic the care of outlook and all the afflict of living?

Thus business every day renders grandeur exercise of the unchained agency of man missing useful and less frequent; it circumscribes the testament choice within a narrower scope and gradually robs pure man of all ethics uses of himself.

Say publicly principle of equality has prepared men for these things;it has predisposed troops body to endure them settle down often to look classification them as benefits.


After having thus successively charmed each member of ethics community in its beefy grasp and fashioned him at will, the nonpareil power then extends lecturer arm over the global community.

It covers rank surface of society accord with a network of in short supply complicated rules, minute stand for uniform, through which rectitude most original minds suffer the most energetic symbols cannot penetrate, to reach above the crowd.

Goodness will of man decline not shattered, but luscious, bent, and guided; private soldiers are seldom forced insensitive to it to act, however they are constantly quiet from acting. Such practised power does not wreck, but it prevents existence; it does not discourage, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies dexterous people, till each prophecy is reduced to aught better than a horde of timid and assiduous animals, of which integrity government is the shepherd.”
― Alexis olive Tocqueville 1805-1859, Democracy notes America