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Alexis de Tocqueville Quotes about Equality

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Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.

Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.

Alexis de Tocqueville
Patriotic, Equality, Differences
"Discours prononcé à l'assemblée constituante le 12 Septembre 1848 sur la question du droit au travail". Oeuvres complètes, Volume IX, p. 546, 1866.

Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.... The subjection of individuals will increase amongst democratic nations, not only in the same proportion as their equality, but in the same proportion as their ignorance.

Alexis de Tocqueville
Ignorance, Equality, Slavery

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.

Alexis de Tocqueville
Freedom, Equality, America
"Democracy in America". Book by Alexis de Tocqueville. Chapter III, Part I, 1835.

The principle of equality does not destroy the imagination, but lowers its flight to the level of the earth.

Alexis de Tocqueville
Equality, Egalitarianism, Imagination
Alexis de Tocqueville (1847). “Democracy in America”

However energetically society in general may strive to make all the citizens equal and alike, the personal pride of each individual will always make him try to escape from the common level, and he will form some inequality somewhere to his own profit.

Alexis de Tocqueville
Pride, Equality, Trying
"Democracy in America". Book by Alexis de Tocqueville, Volume II. Book Three, Chapter XIV, 1840.

Equality is a slogan based on envy. It signifies in the heart of every republican: "Nobody is going to occupy a place higher than I."

Alexis de Tocqueville
Heart, Equality, Envy
Conversation with Nassau William Senior on May 22, 1850 "Correspondence and Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859", p. 94, 1872.

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.

Alexis de Tocqueville
Business, Equality, Men
"Democracy in America". Book by Alexis de Tocqueville, Volume II. Book One, Chapter V, 1840.

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.

Alexis de Tocqueville
Sex, Taken, Equality
Alexis de Tocqueville (1990). “Democracy in America”

Democratic communities have a natural taste for freedom: left to themselves they will seek it, cherish it, and view any deprivation of it with regret. But for equality their passion is ardent, insatiable, incessant, invincible: they call for equality in freedom; and if they cannot obtain that, they still call for equality in slavery.

Alexis de Tocqueville
Regret, Passion, Equality
"Democracy in America". Book by Alexis de Tocqueville, Volume II. Book Two, Chapter I, 1840.

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