Q0419

Alexis de Tocqueville

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

Democratic societies have a natural taste for liberty.
Thinker Alexis de Tocqueville
School Social Thought
Source Democracy in America
Theme Philosophy
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with Democracy in America, within the tradition of Social Thought. The wording below is a verified rendering prepared for careful reading rather than a claim of unique translation authority.

A short reading

Read in the register of philosophy, the sentence asks the reader to test an assumption rather than to collect a slogan. In Alexis de Tocqueville's wider work, similar claims are usually offered as prompts for judgment: what would have to be true for the sentence to hold, and what would follow if it did?

How to cite this quotation

APA: Alexis de Tocqueville. (n.d.). Democratic societies have a natural taste for liberty. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0419

MLA: Alexis de Tocqueville. “Democratic societies have a natural taste for liberty..” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0419.

Chicago: Alexis de Tocqueville. “Democratic societies have a natural taste for liberty..” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0419.

Same thinker

More from Alexis de Tocqueville

  1. One cannot say it too often: nothing is more fruitful in wonders than the art of being free.

All quotations by Alexis de Tocqueville

Same theme

More on philosophy

  1. It is through wonder that people both now begin and first began to philosophize.
  2. A person's character is their destiny.
  3. What is opposed brings together; from what differs comes the finest harmony.
  4. Death is nothing to us: for what has been dissolved has no sensation, and what has no sensation is nothing to us.
  5. Pleasure is the beginning and end of the happy life — not the pleasures of profligates, but freedom from pain in the body and from disturbance in the soul.

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