Alexis de Tocqueville

1805 - 1859

About the Author

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).

In The Library:

• author: L’Ancien Régime et la Révolution (1856)
• author: Correspondence and Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834-1859, 2 vols. (1872)
• author: Correspondence and Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834-1859, vol. 1 (1834-1851) (1872)
• author: Correspondence and Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834-1859, vol. 2 (1851-1859) (1872)
• author: Democracy in America: Historical-Critical Edition, 4 vols. (1835)
• author: Democracy in America: Historical-Critical Edition, vol. 1 (1835)
• author: Democracy in America: Historical-Critical Edition, vol. 2 (1835)
• author: Democracy in America: Historical-Critical Edition, vol. 3 (1840)
• author: Democracy in America: Historical-Critical Edition, vol. 4 (1840)
• author: De la Démocratie en Amérique, 4 vols. (1835)
• author: De la Démocratie en Amérique, vol. 1 (1835)
• author: De la Démocratie en Amérique, vol. 2 (1835)
• author: De la Démocratie en Amérique, vol. 3 (1835)
• author: De la Démocratie en Amérique, vol. 4 (1835)
• author: Memoir, Letters, and Remains of Alexis de Tocqueville, 2 vols. (1861)
• author: Memoir, Letters, and Remains of Alexis de Tocqueville, vol. 1 (1861)
• author: Memoir, Letters, and Remains of Alexis de Tocqueville, vol. 2 (1861)
• author: The Old Regime and the Revolution (1856)
• author: The Recollections of Alexis de Tocqueville (1893)
• author: Report made to the Chamber of Deputies on the Abolition of Slavery in the French Colonies (1840)

Quotations:

• Alexis de Tocqueville stood up in the Constituent Assembly to criticize socialism as a violation of human nature, property rights, and individual liberty (1848) (20 August, 2008)
• Tocqueville on the form of despotism the government would assume in democratic America (1840) (21 June, 2010)
• Tocqueville on the spirit of association (1835) (14 December, 2011)
• Tocqueville on the “New Despotism” (1837) (3 January, 2012)
• Tocqueville on the 1848 Revolution in Paris (1851) (10 February, 2012)
• Tocqueville on the true love of liberty (1856) (8 March, 2013)