Fun With Quotes

I was flipping through my copy of Alexis De Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, and I came across this passage that I underlined several years ago:

In democracies private citizens see men rising from their ranks and attaining wealth and power in a few years; that spectacle excites their astonishment and their envy; they wonder how he who was their equal yesterday has today won the right to command them. To attribute his rise to his talents or his virtues is inconvenient, for it means admitting that they are less virtuous or capable than he. They therefore regard some of his vices as the main cause thereof, and often they are correct in this view. In this way there comes about an odious meaning of the conceptions of baseness and power, of unworthiness and success, and of profit and dishonor.

I thought that this was worth sharing. I hope you enjoyed it.