"Nothing seems at first sight less important than the outward form of human actions, yet there is nothing upon which men set more store: they grow used to everything except to living in a society which has not their own manners"
About this Quote
Alexis de Tocqueville observed that the trivial details of conduct — tone of address, dress, table manners, ways of meeting and parting — look inconsequential beside laws and institutions. Yet people care about them intensely. They will endure poverty, even oppressive administration, more readily than they will accept a daily life that violates their accustomed ways. Forms are not superficial; they are the visible language of a society's values. They tell members who belongs, who deserves respect, how equality or hierarchy is to be expressed.
Writing in 1830s America, where legal equality was advancing and aristocratic rites had been shed, Tocqueville noticed that democratic nations invent their own manners: familiar address, informality, public sociability, and associational habits. These customs smooth cooperation among strangers and cement a shared moral world, what he called moeurs. Because democracy levels ranks, it relies even more on shared norms to coordinate everyday life. The outward form is how equality is enacted and made feelable.
Precisely because forms carry identity, they can also exclude. A newcomer who obeys the law may still feel alien if his gestures, jokes, or pace of life mark him as other. Societies forgive deviation from rules sooner than deviation from style; the latter unsettles the tacit order by which everyday interactions become predictable. Manners are a kind of social grammar, and speaking the wrong dialect agitates people in ways they struggle to explain.
The political lesson is sharp. Legislators can redesign constitutions, but if reforms jar against prevailing manners they often miscarry. Durable change translates principles into recognizable forms. Conversely, struggles over etiquette and language are not trivial skirmishes; they decide who sets the terms of mutual recognition. Tocqueville warns that beneath power and policy lies the stubborn terrain of habit. To govern, persuade, or integrate, one must attend to the outward forms people cherish, for they are how a community experiences itself.
Writing in 1830s America, where legal equality was advancing and aristocratic rites had been shed, Tocqueville noticed that democratic nations invent their own manners: familiar address, informality, public sociability, and associational habits. These customs smooth cooperation among strangers and cement a shared moral world, what he called moeurs. Because democracy levels ranks, it relies even more on shared norms to coordinate everyday life. The outward form is how equality is enacted and made feelable.
Precisely because forms carry identity, they can also exclude. A newcomer who obeys the law may still feel alien if his gestures, jokes, or pace of life mark him as other. Societies forgive deviation from rules sooner than deviation from style; the latter unsettles the tacit order by which everyday interactions become predictable. Manners are a kind of social grammar, and speaking the wrong dialect agitates people in ways they struggle to explain.
The political lesson is sharp. Legislators can redesign constitutions, but if reforms jar against prevailing manners they often miscarry. Durable change translates principles into recognizable forms. Conversely, struggles over etiquette and language are not trivial skirmishes; they decide who sets the terms of mutual recognition. Tocqueville warns that beneath power and policy lies the stubborn terrain of habit. To govern, persuade, or integrate, one must attend to the outward forms people cherish, for they are how a community experiences itself.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
|---|
More Quotes by Alexis
Add to List
