Friedrich Hayek on Alexis de Tocqueville

“Nobody saw more clearly than de Tocqueville that democracy as an essentially individualist institution stood in an irreconcilable conflict with socialism.”

“It is the burden of the argument of Tocqueville's great work, Democracy in America, that democracy is the only effective method of educating the majority... This seems also to explain the puzzling contrast between Tocqueville's persistent faultfinding with democracy on almost all particular points and the emphatic acceptance of the principle which is so characteristic of his work.”

“[O]f a definite liberal movement one can speak only after the Restoration. In France it reached its height during the July Monarchy (1830–48) ... Their programme, known as 'guarantism', was essentially a doctrine of constitutional limitations of government... To this tradition, largely deriving from Britain, also belonged the perhaps most important French liberal thinker, Alexis de Tocqueville.”