Alexis de Tocqueville

1805–1859

Nationality: French

Historical Period: The 19th Century

Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) was an enormously influential French political philosopher, politician, and historian. After a trip to the U.S. in 1831 to observe the penal system he wrote Democracy in America (1835). He served as a member of parliament in the July Monarchy and the 1848 Revolution, writing an important memoir about the events of that upheaval. His last major work was a unfinished history of The Ancien Régime and the Revolution (1856).

See also our collection of extracts, essays, and other resources on Tocqueville.

See the Liberty Matters online discussion on Tocqueville’s New Science of Politics Revisited

Quotes from Alexis de Tocqueville:

• Alexis de Tocqueville on administrative despotism
• Alexis de Tocqueville on government in Canada vs. government in America
• Alexis de Tocqueville on the absence of government in America
• Alexis de Tocqueville on centralization as the form of government for democracies
• Alexis de Tocqueville on the true love of liberty
• Alexis de Tocqueville on the 1848 Revolution in Paris
• Alexis de Tocqueville on the “New Despotism”
• Alexis de Tocqueville on the spirit of association
• Alexis de Tocqueville on the form of despotism the government would assume in democratic America
• Alexis de Tocqueville stood up in the Constituent Assembly to criticize socialism as a violation of human nature, property rights, and individual liberty

Titles from Alexis de Tocqueville:

• Author: L’Ancien Régime et la Révolution (7th ed. 1866)
• Author: BOLL 66: Alexis de Tocqueville, “On Socialism” (1848)
• Author: Correspondence and Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834-1859, 2 vols. (1872)
• Author: Democracy in America. English Edition. 2 vols.
• Author: Democracy in America: Historical-Critical Edition, 4 vols. (LF ed. 2010)
• Author: De la Démocratie en Amérique, 4 vols. (12th ed. 1848)
• Author: Memoir, Letters, and Remains of Alexis de Tocqueville, 2 vols. (1861)
• Author: The Old Regime and the Revolution (1856)
• Author: The Recollections of Alexis de Tocqueville (1896)
• Author: Report made to the Chamber of Deputies on the Abolition of Slavery in the French Colonies (1840)