This is genuine Tocqueville. The sentence opens his portrait of a new, gentle kind of despotism in Democracy in America, Volume 2 — Fourth Book, Chapter VI, “What Sort of Despotism Democratic Nations Have to Fear” — first published in French in 1840. The familiar English wording is Henry Reeve’s translation, and the chapter text confirms it word for word.
“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” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol. 2 (first published in French, 1840), Fourth Book, chap. 6, "What Sort of Despotism Democratic Nations Have to Fear," translated by Henry Reeve.
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Provenance
The source
Work
Democracy in America, Volume 2
Location
Fourth Book, Chapter VI — “What Sort of Despotism Democratic Nations Have to Fear”
First published
1840, in French, as De la démocratie en Amérique (the first volume had appeared in 1835)
Translation
Henry Reeve (1813–1895); Wikisource’s text follows a Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts printing
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, if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks on the contrary to keep them in perpetual childhood: it is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that happiness: it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances—what remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?
Volume 2, Fourth Book, Chapter VI
Reeve’s English as transcribed on Wikiquote and Wikisource. Punctuation differs slightly between printings — some drop the comma before “and to watch over their fate.”
The chapter text on Wikisource ↗ — “What Sort of Despotism Democratic Nations Have to Fear,” in Henry Reeve’s translation — contains the sentence, and the volume contents ↗ place that chapter in the Fourth Book as Chapter VI.
A second independent transcription, the Hanover College excerpt ↗, carries the same paragraph and assigns it to Book 4, Chapter 6.
Liberty Fund ↗ confirms the French original appeared in two volumes, the first in 1835 and the second in 1840; Project Gutenberg ↗ records Volume 2 as translated by Henry Reeve (1813–1895).
The matching French sentence — “Au-dessus de ceux-là, s’élève un pouvoir immense et tutélaire…” — appears in the same chapter on French Wikisource ↗, so the English is a translation of a real line and not a loose modern paraphrase.
✓Public domain
The French original was published in 1840 (Liberty Fund ↗), and the English shown here is Henry Reeve’s translation — Reeve lived 1813–1895, so his rendering is a nineteenth-century one (Project Gutenberg ↗). Both the original and this translation are long out of copyright in the United States, which is why Gutenberg and Wikisource can host the full text; later revisions and modern translations of the same chapter are separate works and may not be.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
What gets confused
This one is real — but Tocqueville is one of the most heavily faked names on the internet, and even the genuine lines reach us through a translator’s ear rather than his own.
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The wordingHenry Reeve, Tocqueville’s English translator translation
The memorable English is Reeve’s. Tocqueville wrote “Au-dessus de ceux-là, s’élève un pouvoir immense et tutélaire, qui se charge seul d’assurer leurs jouissances” (French text ↗). Reeve’s version was later revised by Francis Bowen and further corrected and edited by Phillips Bradley, so other English printings render the same sentence differently (Lukacs, bibliographical essay ↗).
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PunctuationLater printings and quote sites variant
The line circulates as “…their gratifications and to watch over their fate,” while the printed Reeve text has a comma: “…their gratifications, and to watch over their fate.” The difference is typographic, not textual — both forms appear in reputable transcriptions of the same chapter (Wikisource ↗, Hanover ↗).
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Other ‘Tocqueville’ quotesAlexis de Tocqueville — falsely fabricated
Unlike this passage, the two lines most often pinned on him — “America is great because America is good…” and “The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money” — sit in Wikiquote’s Misattributed section, not in his works (Wikiquote ↗).
✓The sentence is locatable, which is the whole test: Democracy in America, Volume 2, Fourth Book, Chapter VI, “What Sort of Despotism Democratic Nations Have to Fear” (read the chapter ↗).
Context
Why it mattered
Tocqueville had spent two volumes arguing that democratic equality was irreversible. In this chapter he asks what could still go wrong, and answers with something that had no name yet: not a strongman, not a mob, but “an immense and tutelary power” — benevolent, tireless, endlessly helpful — that would relieve citizens of the burden of governing themselves.
The force of the passage is that it never accuses the power of cruelty. It is “absolute, minute, regular, provident, and mild,” and its subjects are not oppressed so much as looked after. That is why the sentence has been quoted for well over a century by writers on both sides of the Atlantic who wanted a word for a state that governs by kindness.
It is well content that the people should rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing.
Where exactly the sentence sits in the book
Democracy in America, Volume 2 is divided into four books. The passage is in the Fourth Book, “Influence of Democratic Opinions on Political Society,” Chapter VI, titled in Reeve’s English “What Sort of Despotism Democratic Nations Have to Fear” and in Tocqueville’s French “Quelle espèce de despotisme les nations démocratiques ont à craindre” (Wikisource contents ↗).
The sentence does not stand alone: it answers the paragraph just before it, which describes “an innumerable multitude of men all equal and alike, incessantly endeavouring to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives” (Reeve translation, ch. VI ↗).
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1805–1859 · French political thinker · author of Democracy in America
Tocqueville was a young French magistrate who sailed for the United States in 1831, nominally to study its prisons, and came home with the material for De la démocratie en Amérique — published in two large volumes, the first in 1835 and the second in 1840. The second volume turns from institutions to habits of mind, and closes with a warning: that equality might produce not a tyrant but a mild, busy, all-providing state that citizens would thank for managing their lives. That chapter is where this sentence lives.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Primary source
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol. 2, trans. Henry Reeve, Fourth Book, chap. 6, “What Sort of Despotism Democratic Nations Have to Fear”; first published in French as De la démocratie en Amérique (1840).
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Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘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’?” Last verified 7 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/above-this-race-of-men-stands-an-immense-and-tutelary-power/