6 Alexis de Tocqueville Quotes on Law

Alexis de Tocqueville quotes on law

11. In the United States, except for slaves, servants and the destitute fed by townships, everyone has the vote and this is an indirect contributor to law-making. Anyone wishing to attack the law is thus reduced to adopting one of two obvious courses: they must either change the nation's opinion or trample its wishes under foot.

17. 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.

38. Grant me thirty years of equal division of inheritances and a free press, and I will provide you with a republic.

66. Muhammad brought down from heaven and put into the Koran not religious doctrines only, but political maxims, criminal and civil laws, and scientific theories. The Gospels, on the other hand, deal only with the general relations between man and God and between man and man. Beyond that, they teach nothing and do not oblige people to believe anything. That alone, among a thousand reasons, is enough to show that Islam will not be able to hold its power long in ages of enlightenment and democracy, while Christianity is destined to reign in such ages, as in all others.

75. The best laws cannot make a constitution work in spite of morals; morals can turn the worst laws to advantage. That is a commonplace truth, but one to which my studies are always bringing me back. It is the central point in my conception. I see it at the end of all my reflections.

99. There is hardly a political question in the United States which does not sooner or later turn into a judicial one.