Democracy in America

Alexis de Tocqueville's 'Democracy in America' is full of nuggets of interest and value. For instance...

On Equality

Men's taste for freedom and equality are two different things but their passion for equality is greater. 'Democratic nations are at all times fond of equality but during certain ages their passion for it verges on excess...The passion for equality sinks deeply into every corner of the human heart, expands and fills it entirely...Do not bother to show men that their freedom is slipping from their fingers as their gaze is elsewhere; they are blind, or rather they can see only one advantage worth pursuing in the whole world.

'I think that democratic nations have a natural taste for freedom; left to themselves, they seek it out, become attached to it, and view any departure from it with distress. But they have a burning, insatiable, constant, and invincible passion for equality; they want equality in freedom and, if they cannot have it, they want it in slavery. They will endure poverty, subjection, barbarism but they will not endure aristocracy.'

On Individualism

'Individualism is a recently coined expression prompted by a new idea, for our forefathers knew only of egoism. Egoism is an ardent and excessive love of oneself... Individualism is a calm and considered feeling which persuades each citizen to cut himself off from his fellows and to withdraw into the circle of his family and friends in such a way that he creates a small group of his own and willingly abandons society at large to its own devices. Egoism springs from a blind instinct; individualism from wrong-headed thinking rather than from depraved feelings...Egoism is a perversity as old as the world...; Individualism is democratic in origin and threatens to grow as conditions become equal.'

On American love of associating

'Americans of all ages, conditions and all dispositions constantly unite together. Not only do they have commercial and industrial associations to which all belong but also a thousand other kinds, religious, moral, serious, futile, very general and very specialized, large and small. Americans group together to hold fetes, found seminaries, build inns, construct churches, distribute books, dispatch missionaries to the antipodes. They establish hospitals, prisons, schools by the same method...The English often perform great things as single individuals, whereas scarcely any minor initiative exists where Americans do not form associations... A government could take the place of some of the largest American associations and several individual states have already tried to do so. But what political power could ever substitute for the countless small enterprises which American citizens carry out daily with the help of associations?'


And thus - my 100th blog-post since beginning this digital pin-board in December 2009!