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  • 2019-12-05 (xsd:date)
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  • Did Alexis de Tocqueville Say 'America Is Great Because She Is Good'? (en)
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  • Alexis de Tocqueville was a 19th century French diplomat, political scientist, and historian who is best known for his two-volume work Democracy in America (published in 1835 and 1840), in which he offered his observations on American politics, society, and culture gleaned from his travels across the U.S. in 1831-32. One of the most oft-quoted passages purportedly from Democracy in America is the following, which has been frequently cited (in whole or in part) across the years by politicians, newspapers, books, and websites as a testament to the moral virtuousness of Christianity and/or American democratic institutions: However, these words do not appear in the pages of Democracy in America, nor do they appear in any other writing or recorded utterance contemporaneously traceable to de Tocqueville. Numerous sources have been debunking the de Tocqueville attribution for over 25 years, as seen in the following excerpt from a 1995 article by John J. Pitney, Jr., associate professor of government at Claremont McKenna College: Similarly, Ralph Keyes wrote in his 2006 Quote Verifier book that no definitive documentation has turned up that traces the origins of these words to de Tocqueville himself: Attributions of this passage to de Tocqueville have so far been documented as far back as 1887, and researcher Barry Popik uncovered an unattributed variant published in 1886: A book published in 1835 by Andrew Reed and James Matheson, two British ministers who visited sister churches in the United States in 1834 to promote peace and friendship and then wrote about their travels, contains what may be the seed from which this quotation germinated: America will be great if America is good. If not, her greatness will vanish away like a morning cloud. Whatever the ultimate source, it appears this statement about how America is great because she is good evolved over a long period of time independently of anything de Tocqueville actually wrote, and as part of that evolutionary process it retroactively (and falsely) became attributed to him. (en)
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