Alexis De Tocqueville citáty (142 citátů, strana 2)

Alexis De Tocqueville: 142 citátů 8 lajků

Alexis De Tocqueville nejznámější citáty

„Národy jsou jako lidé. Milují ty, kdo lichotí jejich vášním, spíš než ty, kdo slouží jejich zájmům.“

Alexis De Tocqueville

„Nejnebezpečnější okamžik pro špatnou vládu nastává tehdy, když se začne liberalizovat.“

Alexis De Tocqueville

„Jednoznačně směřujeme k demokracii, netvrdím však, že je to dobře. To, co vidím v této zemi (Americe), mě naopak přesvědčuje, že tento politický systém se pro Francii nehodí. Této síle však nejsme s to se ubránit. Nic ji nedokáže zastavit, a pokud ano, jen nakrátko.“

Alexis De Tocqueville

„Nemohu se ubránit obavám, že by lidé mohli dospět k takovému stavu, kdy by považovali každou novou teorii za nebezpečí, každou novotu za obtížný zmatek, každý sociální pokrok za první krok k revoluci a ze strachu, že by je mohl někam strhnout, by odmítali jakýkoliv pohyb.“

Alexis De Tocqueville

„Despotismus, ze své vlastní povahy velmi podezíravý, považuje izolaci lidí za nejlepší záruku svého vlastního trvání… Despota snadno promine svým poddaným, že ho nemají rádi – ovšem za předpokladu, že ani poddaní navzájem se nebudou mít rádi.“

Alexis De Tocqueville

Zdroj: [Henrie, Mark, Alexis de Tocqueville a úskalí demokracie, http://www.obcinst.cz/alexis-de-tocqueville-a-uskali-demokracie/, 1995-12-1, 2014-12-23, Občanský institut, Praha]

„Pán již neříká: ‘Buď budeš myslet stejně jako já, nebo zemřeš.’ Říká však: ‘Máš svobodu nemyslet stejně jako já – můžeš si ponechat svůj život, majetek a vše co máš. Ale od dnešního dne jsi mezi námi cizincem… Když se přiblížíš ke svým bližním, budou se ti vyhýbat jako nečisté bytosti… Jdi v pokoji. Ponechal jsem ti tvůj život, ale je to život horší než smrt’.“

Alexis De Tocqueville

O tyranii veřejného mínění
Zdroj: [Henrie, Mark, Alexis de Tocqueville a úskalí demokracie, http://www.obcinst.cz/alexis-de-tocqueville-a-uskali-demokracie/, 1995-12-1, 2014-12-23, Občanský institut, Praha]

„Většina má ve Spojených státech nesmírnou a skutečnou moc a na své straně má také veřejné mínění, které je téměř stejně mocné. Když se toto veřejné mínění jednou v nějaké záležitosti rozhodne, neexistují… žádné překážky, jež by mohly zpomalit a o to méně zastavit postup vpřed a popřát nějaký čas k tomu, aby byly vyslechnuty nářky těch, kteří na takové rozhodnutí doplácejí.“

Alexis De Tocqueville

Zdroj: [Henrie, Mark, Alexis de Tocqueville a úskalí demokracie, http://www.obcinst.cz/alexis-de-tocqueville-a-uskali-demokracie/, 1995-12-1, 2014-12-23, Občanský institut, Praha]

Alexis De Tocqueville: Citáty anglicky

“In cities men cannot be prevented from concerting together, and from awakening a mutual excitement which prompts sudden and passionate resolutions. Cities may be looked upon as large assemblies, of which all the inhabitants are members; their populace exercises a prodigious influence upon the magistrates, and frequently executes its own wishes without their intervention.”

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Alexis De Tocqueville kniha Democracy in America

Variant translation: In towns it is impossible to prevent men from assembling, getting excited together and forming sudden passionate resolves. Towns are like great meeting houses with all the inhabitants as members. In them the people wield immense influence over their magistrates and often carry their desires into execution without intermediaries.
Zdroj: Democracy in America, Volume I (1835), Chapter XV-IXX, Chapter XVII.

“I have come across men of letters who have written history without taking part in public affairs, and politicians who have concerned themselves with producing events without thinking about them. I have observed that the first are always inclined to find general causes whereas the second, living in the midst of disconnected daily facts, are prone to imagine that everything is attributable to particular incidents, and that the wires they pull are the same as those that move the world. It is to be presumed that both are equally deceived.”

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Alexis De Tocqueville

Recollections of Alexis de Tocqueville, p. 80 http://books.google.com/books?id=3gtoAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA80&dq=%22come+across+men+of+letters+who+have+written+history+without+taking+part+in+public+affairs%22
1850s and later

“They all attributed the peaceful dominion of religion in their country mainly to the separation of church and state. I do not hesitate to affirm that during my stay in America I did not meet a single individual, of the clergy or the laity, who was not of the same opinion on this point.”

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Alexis De Tocqueville kniha Democracy in America

Zdroj: Democracy in America, Volume I (1835), Chapter XV-IXX, Chapter XVII.

“When an opinion has taken root in a democracy and established itself in the minds of the majority, it afterward persists by itself, needing no effort to maintain it since no one attacks it. Those who at first rejected it as false come in the end to adopt it as accepted, and even those who still at the bottom of their hearts oppose it keep their views to themselves, taking great care to avoid a dangerous and futile contest.”

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Alexis De Tocqueville kniha Democracy in America

Book Three, Chapter XXI.
Democracy in America, Volume II (1840), Book Three

“The power of the periodical press is second only to that of the people.”

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Alexis De Tocqueville kniha Democracy in America

Zdroj: Democracy in America, Volume I (1835), Chapter X-XIV, Chapter XI.

“If a [democratic] society displays less brilliance than an aristocracy, there will also be less wretchedness; pleasures will be less outrageous and wellbeing will be shared by all; the sciences will be on a smaller scale but ignorance will be less common; opinions will be less vigorous and habits gentler; you will notice more vices and fewer crimes.”

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Alexis De Tocqueville kniha Democracy in America

Original text: [...] si l'on y rencontre moins d'éclat qu'au sein d'une aristocratie, on y trouvera moins de misères; les jouissances y seront moins extrêmes, et le bien-être plus général; les sciences moins grandes, et l'ignorance plus rare; les sentiments moins énergiques, et les habitudes plus douces; on y remarquera plus de vices et moins de crimes.
Introduction.
Democracy in America, Volume I (1835)

“The regime which is destroyed by a revolution is almost always an improvement on its immediate predecessor, and experience teaches that the most critical moment for bad governments is the one which witnesses their first steps toward reform.”

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Alexis De Tocqueville kniha The Old Regime and the Revolution

Variant translation: The most dangerous moment for a bad government is when it begins to reform.
Old Regime (1856), p. 214 http://books.google.com/books?id=N50aibeL8BAC&pg=PA214&vq=%22most+critical+moment+for+bad+governments%22&source=gbs_search_r&cad=1_1
1850s and later

“God does not need to speak for himself in order for us to discover definitive signs of his will; it is enough to examine the normal course of nature and the consistent tendency of events. I know without needing to hear the voice of the Creator that the stars trace out in space the orbits which his hand has drawn.”

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Alexis De Tocqueville kniha Democracy in America

Original text: Il n’est pas nécessaire que Dieu parle lui-même pour que nous découvrions des signes certains de sa volonté; il suffit d’examiner quelle est la marche habituelle de la nature et la tendance continue des événements; je sais, sans que le Créateur élève la voix, que les astres suivent dans l’espace les courbes que son doigt a tracées.
Introduction
Democracy in America, Volume I (1835)

“The most formidable of all the ills that threaten the future of the Union arises from the presence of a black population upon its territory; and in contemplating the cause of the present embarrassments, or the future dangers of the United States, the observer is invariably led to this as a primary fact.”

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Alexis De Tocqueville kniha Democracy in America

Zdroj: Democracy in America, Volume I (1835), Chapter XV-IXX, Chapter XVIII.

“The Indian knew how to live without wants, to suffer without complaint, and to die singing.”

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Alexis De Tocqueville kniha Democracy in America

Zdroj: Democracy in America, Volume I (1835), Chapter I-V, Chapter I.

“Americans cleave to the things of this world as if assured that they will never die,… They clutch everything but hold nothing fast, and so lose grip as they hurry after some new delight. An American will build a house in which to pass his old age and sell it before the roof is on; he will plant a garden and rent it just as the trees are coming into bearing; he will clear a field and leave others to reap the harvest; he will take up a profession and leave it, settle in one place and soon go off elsewhere with his changing desires. If his private business allows him a moment’s relaxation, he will plunge at once into the whirlpool of politics. Then, if at the end of a year crammed with work he has a little spare leisure, his restless curiosity goes with him traveling up and down the vast territories of the United States. Thus he will travel five hundred miles in a few days as a distraction from his happiness. Death steps in in the end and stops him before he has grown tired of this futile pursuit of that complete felicity which always escapes him. At first sight there is something astonishing in this spectacle of so many lucky men restless in the midst of abundance. But it is a spectacle as old as the world; all that is new is to see a whole people performing in it.”

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Alexis De Tocqueville kniha Democracy in America

Book Two, Chapter XIII.
Democracy in America, Volume II (1840), Book Two

“Useful undertakings which require sustained attention and vigorous precision in order to succeed often end up by being abandoned, for, in America, as elsewhere, the people move forward by sudden impulses and short-lived efforts.”

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Alexis De Tocqueville kniha Democracy in America

Zdroj: Democracy in America, Volume I (1835), Chapter I-V, Chapter V

“If there ever are great revolutions there, they will be caused by the presence of the blacks upon American soil. That is to say, it will not be the equality of social conditions but rather their inequality which may give rise thereto.”

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Alexis De Tocqueville kniha Democracy in America

Book Three, Chapter XXI.
Democracy in America, Volume II (1840), Book Three

“There are at the present time two great nations in the world—allude to the Russians and the Americans— All other nations seem to have nearly reached their national limits, and have only to maintain their power; these alone are proceeding—along a path to which no limit can be perceived.”

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Alexis De Tocqueville kniha Democracy in America

Zdroj: Democracy in America, Volume I (1835), Chapter XV-IXX, Chapter XVIII.

“In America, more than anywhere else in the world, care has been taken constantly to trace clearly distinct spheres of action for the two sexes, and both are required to keep in step, but along paths that are never the same.”

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Alexis De Tocqueville kniha Democracy in America

Book Three, Chapter XII.
Democracy in America, Volume II (1840), Book Three

“Laws are always unstable unless they are founded on the manners of a nation; and manners are the only durable and resisting power in a people.”

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Alexis De Tocqueville kniha Democracy in America

Zdroj: Democracy in America, Volume I (1835), Chapter XV-IXX, Chapter XVI.

“They call, in fact, for the forfeiture, to a greater or less degree, of human liberty, to the point where, were I to attempt to sum up what socialism is, I would say that it was simply a new system of serfdom.”

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Alexis De Tocqueville

Notes for a Speech on Socialism (1848). http://oll.libertyfund.org/pages/tocqueville-s-critique-of-socialism-1848
1840s

“There is in fact a manly and legitimate passion for equality that spurs all men to wish to be strong and esteemed. This passion tends to elevate the lesser to the rank of the greater. But one also finds in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to want to bring the strong down to their level, and which reduces men to preferring equality in servitude to inequality in freedom.”

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Alexis De Tocqueville kniha Democracy in America

Often misquoted as: Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.
Zdroj: Democracy in America, Volume I (1835), Chapter I-V, Chapter III, Part I

“Americans combine to give fêtes, found seminaries, build churches, distribute books, and send missionaries to the antipodes. Hospitals, prisons, and schools take shape in that way. Finally, if they want to proclaim a truth or propagate some feeling by the encouragement of a great example, they form an association. In every case, at the head of any new undertaking, where in France you would find the government or in England some territorial magnate, in the United States you are sure to find an association. I have come across several types of association in America of which, I confess, I had not previously the slightest conception, and I have often admired the extreme skill they show in proposing a common object for the exertions of very many and in inducing them voluntarily to pursue it.”

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Alexis De Tocqueville kniha Democracy in America

Book Two, Chapter V.
Democracy in America, Volume II (1840), Book Two

“What most astonishes me in the United States, is not so much the marvelous grandeur of some undertakings, as the innumerable multitude of small ones.”

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Alexis De Tocqueville kniha Democracy in America

Book Two, Chapter XIX.
Democracy in America, Volume II (1840), Book Two

“The French want no-one to be their superior. The English want inferiors. The Frenchman constantly raises his eyes above him with anxiety. The Englishman lowers his beneath him with satisfaction.”

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Alexis De Tocqueville

Journeys to England and Ireland (1835).
1830s

“In America, conscription is unknown; men are enlisted for payment. Compulsory recruitment is so alien to the ideas and so foreign to the customs of the people of the United States that I doubt whether they would ever dare to introduce it into their law.”

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Alexis De Tocqueville kniha Democracy in America

Zdroj: Democracy in America, Volume I (1835), Chapter X-XIV, Chapter XIII.

“He who seeks freedom for anything but freedom's self is made to be a slave.”

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Alexis De Tocqueville kniha The Old Regime and the Revolution

Original text: Qui cherche dans la liberté autre chose qu'elle-même est fait pour servir.
Variant translation: The man who asks of freedom anything other than itself is born to be a slave.
Old Regime (1856), p. 204 http://books.google.com/books?id=N50aibeL8BAC&pg=PA204&vq=%22He+who+seeks+freedom%22&source=gbs_search_r&cad=1_1
1850s and later

“In America a woman loses her independence for ever in the bonds of matrimony. While there is less constraint on girls there than anywhere else, a wife submits to stricter obligations. For the former, her father's house is a home of freedom and pleasure; for the latter, her husband's is almost a cloister.”

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Alexis De Tocqueville kniha Democracy in America

Book Three, Chapter X.
Democracy in America, Volume II (1840), Book Three

“After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the government then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence: it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”

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Alexis De Tocqueville kniha Democracy in America

Book Four, Chapter VI.
Democracy in America, Volume II (1840), Book Four

“The public, therefore, among a democratic people, has a singular power, which aristocratic nations cannot conceive; for it does not persuade others to its beliefs, but it imposes them and makes them permeate the thinking of everyone by a sort of enormous pressure of the mind of all upon the individual intelligence.”

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Alexis De Tocqueville kniha Democracy in America

Book One, Chapter II.
Democracy in America, Volume II (1840), Book One

“The French are … the most brilliant and the most dangerous nation of Europe, and the one that is surest to inspire admiration, hatred, terror, or pity, but never indifference.”

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Alexis De Tocqueville kniha The Old Regime and the Revolution

Original text: La France est la plus brillante et la plus dangereuse des nations de l'Europe, et la mieux faite pour y devenir tour à tour un objet d'admiration, de haine, de pitié, de terreur, mais jamais d'indifférence.
Variant translation: The French constitute the most brilliant and the most dangerous nation in Europe and the best qualified in turn to become an object of admiration, hatred, pity or terror but never indifference.
Old Regime (1856), p. 245 http://books.google.com/books?id=N50aibeL8BAC&pg=PA254&vq=%22the+most+brilliant+and+the+most+dangerous%22&source=gbs_search_r&cad=1_1
1850s and later

“We are sleeping on a volcano… A wind of revolution blows, the storm is on the horizon.”

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Alexis De Tocqueville

Original text: Nous dormons sur un volcan… Ne voyez-vous pas que la terre commence à trembler. Le vent de la révolte souffle, la tempête est à l’horizon.
Speaking in the Chamber of Deputies just prior to to outbreak of revolution in Europe (1848).
1840s