Sublime

Alexis de Tocqueville

It is to be observed that whenever the exclusive right of regulating certain matters is not reserved to Congress by the Constitution, the States may take up the affair until it is brought before the National Assembly.

axiom of political science in that country that the only way to neutralize the effect of public journals is to multiply them indefinitely.

becomes dangerous in proportion to the impossibility which excludes great parties from acquiring the majority.

When a democratic republic renders offices which had formerly been remunerated gratuitous, it may safely be believed that the State is advancing to monarchical institutions; and when a monarchy begins to remunerate such officers as had hitherto been unpaid, it is a sure sign that it is approaching toward a despotic or a republican form of governmen

to the end that the office might be powerful and the officer insignificant,

Enfin, autant l’écriture de Tocqueville est d’une lumineuse clarté, autant sa pensée est complexe. Si on ne trouve chez lui ni esprit de système, ni sens de l’histoire, ni prophétie sur l’avènement ou le triomphe éternel de la démocratie, son génie fut de dégager, sous l’Amérique et la France, le principe du fait démocratique et du fait révolutionn

beginning of the seventeenth century, absolute monarchy had everywhere triumphed over the ruins of the oligarchical and feudal liberties of the Middle Ages.

Mill held that truth emerges from an unfettered competition of ideas and that individual character is most improved when allowed to find its own way uncoerced. That vision was insufficient for 20th-century American liberalism.