Alexis De Tocqueville citáty (142 citátů, strana 4)

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

“You may set the Negro free, but you cannot make him otherwise than an alien to the European. Nor is this all we scarcely acknowledge the common features of humanity in this stranger whom slavery has brought among us. His physiognomy is to our eyes hideous, his understanding weak, his tastes low; and we are almost inclined to look upon him as a being intermediate between man and the brutes.”

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Alexis De Tocqueville kniha Democracy in America

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

“Alternative translation: In politics… shared hatreds are almost always the basis of friendships.”

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Alexis De Tocqueville

Recollections of Alexis de Tocqueville, p. 96 http://books.google.com/books?id=3gtoAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA96&vq=%22hatred+is+almost+always+the+foundation%22&source=gbs_search_s&cad=0
1850s and later

“The genius of democracies is seen not only in the great number of new words introduced but even more in the new ideas they express.”

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Alexis De Tocqueville kniha Democracy in America

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

“It is easy to see that, even in the freedom of early youth, an American girl never quite loses control of herself; she enjoys all permitted pleasures without losing her head about any of them, and her reason never lets the reins go, though it may often seem to let them flap.”

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Alexis De Tocqueville kniha Democracy in America

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

“The people reign over the American political world as God rules over the universe. It is the cause and the end of all things; everything rises out of it and is absorbed back into it.”

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Alexis De Tocqueville kniha Democracy in America

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

“A democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it.”

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Alexis De Tocqueville kniha Democracy in America

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

“It is almost never when a state of things is the most detestable that it is smashed, but when, beginning to improve, it permits men to breathe, to reflect, to communicate their thoughts with each other, and to gauge by what they already have the extent of their rights and their grievances. The weight, although less heavy, seems then all the more unbearable.”

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Alexis De Tocqueville

Letter to Pierre Freslon, 23 September 1853 Selected Letters, p. 296 as cited in Toqueville's Road Map p. 103 http://books.google.com/books?id=fLL6Bil2gtcC&pg=PA103&dq=%22almost+never+when+a+state+of+things+is+the+most+detestable+that+it+is+smashed%22
1850s and later

“By and large the literature of a democracy will never exhibit the order, regularity, skill, and art characteristic of aristocratic literature; formal qualities will be neglected or actually despised. The style will often be strange, incorrect, overburdened, and loose, and almost always strong and bold. Writers will be more anxious to work quickly than to perfect details. Short works will be commoner than long books, wit than erudition, imagination than depth. There will be a rude and untutored vigor of thought with great variety and singular fecundity. Authors will strive to astonish more than to please, and to stir passions rather than to charm taste.”

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Alexis De Tocqueville kniha Democracy in America

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

“Variant: What is not yet done is only what we have not yet attempted to do.”

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Alexis De Tocqueville kniha Democracy in America

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

“Consider any individual at any period of his life, and you will always find him preoccupied with fresh plans to increase his comfort.”

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Alexis De Tocqueville kniha Democracy in America

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

“Step back in time; look closely at the child in the very arms of his mother; see the external world reflected for the first time in the yet unclear mirror of his understanding; study the first examples which strike his eyes; listen to the first words which arouse within him the slumbering power of thought; watch the first struggles which he has to undergo; only then will you comprehend the source of his prejudices, the habits, and the passions which are to rule his life. The entire man, so to speak, comes fully formed in the wrappings of his cradle.”

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Alexis De Tocqueville kniha Democracy in America

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

“They (the emperors) frequently abused their power arbitrarily to deprive their subjects of property or of life: their tyranny was extremely onerous to the few, but it did not reach the greater number;.. But it would seem that if despotism were to be established amongst the democratic nations of our days it might assume a different character; it would be more extensive and more mild, it would degrade men without tormenting them.”

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Alexis De Tocqueville kniha Democracy in America

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

“The New Englander is attached to his township because it is strong and independent; he has an interest in it because he shares in its management; he loves it because he has no reason to complain of his lot; he invests his ambition and his future in it; in the restricted sphere within his scope, he learns to rule society; he gets to know those formalities without which freedom can advance only through revolutions, and becoming imbued with their spirit, develops a taste for order, understands the harmony of powers, and in the end accumulates clear, practical ideas about the nature of his duties and the extent of his rights.”

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Alexis De Tocqueville kniha Democracy in America

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

“General ideas are no proof of the strength, but rather of the insufficiency of the human intellect.”

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Alexis De Tocqueville kniha Democracy in America

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

“Men in general are neither very good nor very bad, but mediocre… Man with his vices, his weaknesses, his virtues, this confused medley of good and ill, high and low, goodness and depravity, is yet, take him all in all, the object on earth most worthy of study, of interest, of pity, of attachment and of admiration. And since we haven't got angels, we can attach ourselves to nothing greater and more worthy of our devotion than our own kind.”

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Alexis De Tocqueville

Letter to Eugene Stoffels (Jan. 3, 1845) as quoted by Thomas Molnar, The Decline of the Intellectual (1961) Ch. 11 "Intellectual and Philosopher"
Original text:
Les hommes ne sont en général ni très-bons, ni très-mauvais : ils sont médiocres. [...] L'homme avec ses vices, ses faiblesses, ses vertus, ce mélange confus de bien et de mal, de bas et de haut, d'honnête et de dépravé, est encore, à tout prendre, l'objet le plus digne d'examen, d'intérêt, de pitié, d'attachement et d'admiration qui se trouve sur la terre; et puisque les anges nous manquent, nous ne saurions nous attacher à rien qui soit plus grand et plus digne de notre dévouement que nos semblables.
1840s

“No protracted war can fail to endanger the freedom of a democratic country.”

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Alexis De Tocqueville kniha Democracy in America

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

“With much care and skill power has been broken into fragments in the American township, so that the maximum possible number of people have some concern with public affairs.”

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Alexis De Tocqueville kniha Democracy in America

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

“I know of no country, indeed, where the love of money has taken stronger hold on the affections of men, and where the profounder contempt is expressed for the theory of the permanent equality of property.”

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Alexis De Tocqueville kniha Democracy in America

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

“Nothing seems at first sight less important than the outward form of human actions, yet there is nothing upon which men set more store: they grow used to everything except to living in a society which has not their own manners.”

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Alexis De Tocqueville kniha Democracy in America

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

“I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America.”

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Alexis De Tocqueville kniha Democracy in America

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

“In order to enjoy the inestimable benefits that the liberty of the press ensures, it is necessary to submit to the inevitable evils it creates”

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Alexis De Tocqueville kniha Democracy in America

Pour recueillir les biens inestimables qu'assure la liberté de la presse, il faut savoir se soumettre aux maux inévitables qu'elle fait naître.
Zdroj: Democracy in America, Volume I (1835), Chapter X-XIV, Chapter XI.

“In America the majority raises formidable barriers around the liberty of opinion; within these barriers an author may write what he pleases, but woe to him if he goes beyond them.”

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Alexis De Tocqueville kniha Democracy in America

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

“In countries where associations are free, secret societies are unknown. In America there are factions, but no conspiracies.”

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Alexis De Tocqueville kniha Democracy in America

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

“I should have loved freedom, I believe, at all times, but in the time in which we live I am ready to worship it.”

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Alexis De Tocqueville kniha Democracy in America

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

“I am far from denying that newspapers in democratic countries lead citizens to do very ill-considered things in common; but without newspapers there would be hardly any common action at all. So they mend many more ills than they cause.”

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Alexis De Tocqueville kniha Democracy in America

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

“The main business of religions is to purify, control, and restrain that excessive and exclusive taste for well-being which men acquire in times of equality.”

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Alexis De Tocqueville kniha Democracy in America

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

“I studied the Koran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Muhammad. So far as I can see, it is the principal cause of the decadence so visible today in the Muslim world and, though less absurd than the polytheism of old, its social and political tendencies are in my opinion to be feared, and I therefore regard it as a form of decadence rather than a form of progress in relation to paganism itself.”

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Alexis De Tocqueville

Letter to Arthur de Gobineau, 22 October 1843, Tocqueville Reader, p. 229 http://books.google.com/books?id=JhEVK0UMgFMC&pg=PA229&vq=studied+the+koran&dq=%22few+religions+in+the+world+as+deadly+to+men+as+that+of+Muhammad%22+-tocqueville&source=gbs_search_s&cad=0
Original text: J’ai beaucoup étudié le Koran à cause surtout de notre position vis-à-vis des populations musulmanes en Algérie et dans tout l’Orient. Je vous avoue que je suis sorti de cette étude avec la conviction qu’il y avait eu dans le monde, à tout prendre, peu de religions aussi funestes aux hommes que celle de Mahomet. [...] Elle est, à mon sens, la principale cause de la décadence aujourd’hui si visible du monde musulman, et quoique moins absurde que le polythéisme antique, ses tendances sociales et politiques étant, à mon avis, infiniment plus à redouter, je la regarde relativement au paganisme lui-même comme une décadence plutôt que comme un progrès (Wikisource)
1840s

“In a revolution, as in a novel, the most difficult part to invent is the end.”

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Alexis De Tocqueville

Recollections of Alexis de Tocqueville, p. 71 http://books.google.com/books?id=3gtoAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA71&dq=%22most+difficult+part+to+invent+is+the+end%22.
1850s and later