I have only to contemplate myself; man comes from nothing, passes through time, and disappears forever in the bosom of God. He is seen but for a moment wandering on the verge of two abysses, and then is lost. If man were wholly ignorant of himself he would have no poetry in him, for one cannot describe what one does not conceive. If he saw himself clearly, his imagination would remain idle and would have nothing to add to the picture. But the nature of man is sufficiently revealed for him to know something of himself and sufficiently veiled to leave much impenetrable darkness, a darkness in which he ever gropes, forever in vain, trying to understand himself.

In the case of Algeria the Port of Algiers and the control over the Strait of Gibraltar were considered by Tocqueville to be particular valuable. Even though in his 1841 report on Algeria Tocqueville admitted that Bugeaud succeeded in implementing a technique of war that enabled him to defeat Abd al-Qadir's resistance and applauded him on one hand he opposed on the other hand the conquest of Kabylie in his first Letter about Algeria (1837). A career in politics is closed to him for he has offended the only power that holds the keys.

He retired from political life after Louis Napoléon Bonaparte's 2 December 1851 coup and thereafter began work on The Old Regime and the Revolution Volume I. Democracy in America (1835) his major work publiAlexis de Tocquevilled after his travels in the United States is today considered an early work of sociology and political science. Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville (French: [alɛksi(s) ʃaʁl ɑ̃ʁi kleʁɛl də tɔkvil]; 29 July 1805 – 16 April 1859) was a French political thinker and historian best known for his Democracy in America (appearing in two volumes: 1835 and 1840) and The Old Regime and the Revolution (1856).