In 1840, the first American edition of the second volume of Alexis De Tocqueville’s Democracy in America was published. Remarking on potential despotisms that democracies might face, De Tocqueville stated,
“I do not expect their leaders to be tyrants, but rather schoolmasters. [Such an ‘educational’ despotism] would degrade men without tormenting them. As for the rest of [one’s] fellow citizens, [the educational despot] is close to them, but he does not see them; he touches them, but he does not feel them; he exists only in himself and for himself alone. Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent. It provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry. After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided. It does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, until each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd. It is vain to summon a people who have been rendered so dependent on the central power to choose from time to time the representatives of that power; this rare and brief exercise of their free choice will not prevent them from gradually losing the faculties of thinking, feeling, and acting for themselves, and thus gradually falling below the level of humanity.”
The inspiration in this quote isn't the warning but what one can be inspired to do because of keeping the warning in the forefront of one's mind.
