We succeed in enterprises which demand the positive qualities we possess, but we excel in those which can also make use of our defects.
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.
The Indian knew how to live without wants, to suffer without complaint, and to die singing.
In a revolution, as in a novel, the most difficult part to invent is the end.
In other words, a democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it.
The Americans combine the notions of religion and liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive of one without the other.
The power of the periodical press is second only to that of the people.
Life is to be entered upon with courage.
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.
The whole life of an American is passed like a game of chance, a revolutionary crisis, or a battle.
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.
All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and shortest means to accomplish it.
There are two things which a democratic people will always find very difficult - to begin a war and to end it.
The debates of that great assembly are frequently vague and perplexed, seeming to be dragged rather than to march, to the intended goal. Something of this sort must, I think, always happen in public democratic assemblies.
He was as great as a man can be without morality.
It is the dissimilarities and inequalities among men which give rise to the notion of honor; as such differences become less, it grows feeble; and when they disappear, it will vanish too.
There is hardly a pioneer's hut which does not contain a few odd volumes of Shakespeare. I remember reading the feudal drama of Henry V for the first time in a log cabin.
Consider any individual at any period of his life, and you will always find him preoccupied with fresh plans to increase his comfort.
No state of society or laws can render men so much alike but that education, fortune, and tastes will interpose some differences between them; and though different men may sometimes find it their interest to combine for the same purposes, they will never make it their pleasure.
An American cannot converse, but he can discuss, and his talk falls into a dissertation. He speaks to you as if he was addressing a meeting; and if he should chance to become warm in the discussion, he will say 'Gentlemen' to the person with whom he is conversing.
