Democracy in America

To create a national representation in a very centralized country is therefore to diminish the evil that extreme centralization can produce, but not to destroy it.

see an innumerable crowd of like and equal men who revolve on themselves without repose, procuring the small and vulgar pleasures with which they fill their souls.

do not fear that in their chiefs they will find tyrants, but rather schoolmasters.

they make them alternatively the playthings of the sovereign and its masters, more than kings and less than men. After

It seems that if despotism came to be established in the democratic nations of our day, it would have other characteristics: it would be more extensive and milder, and it would degrade men without tormenting them.*1

caprices

There is no question of rendering it weak or indolent, but only of preventing it from abusing its agility and force.

Despotism therefore appears to me particularly to be dreaded in democratic ages.

does not tyrannize, it hinders, compromises, enervates, extinguishes, dazes, and finally reduces each nation to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals of which the government is the shepherd.