"Democracy's the worst form of
government except for all the others."
Winston Churchill
Freedom has a thousand charms to show that slaves,
howe'er contented cannot know.
William Cowper
Do, or do not. There is no 'try'
Yoda
God is a comedian playing to a audience
too afraid to laugh
Voltaire
American Character
"It is part of the American character to consider nothing as desperate."
Thomas Jefferson
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.70AD
Anger
When angry, count ten before you speak;
if very angry, one hundred.
Thomas Jefferson
Arms
For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so,
a well organized and armed militia is their best security.
Thomas Jefferson
Source: Eighth Annual Message, November 8, 1808
No free man shall ever be de-barred the use of arms.
Thomas Jefferson
The strongest reason for the people to retain their right
to keep and bear arms is as a last resort to protect
themselves against tyranny in government.
Thomas Jefferson
"A strong body makes the mind strong.
As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun.
While this gives moderate exercise to the body,
it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind.
Games played with the ball, and others of that nature,
are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind.
Let your gun therefore be the constant companion of your walk."
Thomas Jefferson
Source: in a letter written in Paris to his nephew and ward Peter Carr,
Foley, ed., Encyclopedia of Thomas Jefferson, p. 318.
http://liberty-tree.ca/qb/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.B699
Banks
I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous
to our liberties than standing armies. Already they
have raised up a moneyed aristocracy that has set
the Government at defiance. The issuing power should
be taken from the banks and restored to the people to
whom it properly belongs.
Thomas Jefferson
If the American people ever allow private banks to
control the issue of their money, first by inflation
and then by deflation, the banks and corporations
that will grow up around them (around the banks),
will deprive the people of their property until their
children will wake up homeless on the continent
their fathers conquered.
Thomas Jefferson
The system of banking [is] a blot left in all our
Constitutions, which, if not covered, will end in their
destruction... I sincerely believe that banking
institutions are more dangerous than standing
armies; and that the principle of spending money
to be paid by posterity
... is but swindling futurity on a large scale.
Thomas Jefferson
"I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on
this ground that 'all powers not delegated to the United
States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the
states, are preserved to the states or to the people.'
... To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially
drawn around the powers of Congress is to take possession
of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any
definition. The incorporation of a bank, and the powers assumed
by this bill (chartering the first Bank of the United States),
have not, been delegated to the United States by the Constitution."
Thomas Jefferson
Be Quiet
If a member finds that it is not the inclination of the House to hear
him, and that by conversation or any other noise they endeavor to
drown his voice, it is his most prudent way to submit to the pleasure
of the House, and sit down.
Thomas Jefferson
Source:Hind's Precedents of the US House
Benefits
"Those who bear equally the burthens of Government
should equally participate of its benefits."
Thomas Jefferson
Bigotry
"We shall have our follies without doubt. Some one or more of them will
always be afloat. But ours will be the follies of enthusiasm,
not of bigotry, not of Jesuitism. Bigotry is the disease of ignorance,
of morbid minds; enthusiasm of the free and buoyant. Education and free
discussion are the antidotes of both."
Thomas Jefferson
Source: letter to John Adams, August 1, 1816
Books
"I cannot live without books."
Thomas Jefferson
Source: letter to John Adams, June 10, 1815
http://liberty-tree.ca/qb/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.1162
Bread
"Were we directed from Washington
when to sow and when to reap,
we should soon want bread."
-- Thomas Jefferson
Censorship
"I am really mortified to be told that, in the United
States of America, a fact like this can become a subject
of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too, as an offence
against religion; that a question about the sale of a
book can be carried before the civil magistrate. Is
this then our freedom of religion? And are we to have a
censor whose imprimatur shall say what books may be sold,
and what we may buy? And who is thus to dogmatize
religious opinions for our citizens? Whose foot is to
be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or
stretched? Is a priest to be our inquisitor, or shall
a layman, simple as ourselves, set up his reason as
the rule for what we are to read, and what we must
believe? It is an insult to our citizens to question
whether they are rational beings or not, and blasphemy
against religion to suppose it cannot stand the test of
truth and reason."
Thomas Jefferson
Source: Letter, 19 April 1814
Change
Where a new invention promises to be useful,
it ought to be tried.
Thomas Jefferson
Choice
"Choice by the people themselves is not generally distinguished
for its wisdom."
Thomas Jefferson
Source: 1776, Jefferson’s Literary Commonplace Book,
Wilson, ed., 1989, p. 11.
Church and State
Believing with you that religion is a matter which
lies solely between man and his God, I contemplate
with solemn reverence that act of the whole
American people which declared that their legislature
should "make no law respecting an establishment
of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof"
thus building a wall of separation between
Church and State.
Thomas Jefferson
"It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are
twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor
breaks my leg."
Thomas Jefferson quoted by Gerard Straub in
"Salvation for Sale"
"In every country and in every age, the priest has been
hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the
despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection
to his own"
Thomas Jefferson, 1814
"Our particular principles of religion are
a subject of accountability to our god alone.
I enquire after no man's and trouble none with mine;
nor is it given to us in this life to know whether yours or mine,
our friend's or our foe's, are exactly the right."
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
Source: letter to Miles King, September 26, 1814
Cities
"I view great cities as pestilential to the morals,
the health and the liberties of man.
True, they nourish some of the elegant arts;
but the useful ones can thrive elsewhere;
and less perfection in the others, with more health,
virtue and freedom, would be my choice."
Thomas Jefferson
Source: letter to Benjamin Rush, 1800. ME 10:173
Citizen Soldier
"Every citizen should be a soldier.
This was the case with the Greeks and Romans,
and must be that of every free state."
Thomas Jefferson
Source:http://liberty-tree.ca/qb/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.B723
Constitution
"I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on
this ground: That 'all powers not delegated to the
United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it
to the States, are reserved to the States or to
the people' (10th Amendment). To take a single step beyond the
boundaries thus specifically drawn around the powers of Congress,
is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer
susceptible to any definition."
Thomas Jefferson
Source: letter to George Washington,15 February, 1791
"The two enemies of the people are criminals and government,
so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution
so the second will not become the legalized version of the first."
Thomas Jefferson
Source:http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.A277
"The constitutions of most of our states (and of the United States) assert that all
power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves; that it
is their right and duty to be at all times armed; that they are entitled to
freedom of person, freedom of religion, freedom of property and freedom of the press."
Thomas Jefferson
Source:http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.ACF7
"The true theory of our Constitution is surely the wisest and best, that the
States are independent as to everything within themselves, and united as to
everything respecting foreign affairs. Let the General Government be reduced to
foreign concerns only, and let our affairs be disentangled from those of all
other nations, except as to commerce, which the merchants will manage the
better, the more they are left free to manage for themselves, and our General
Government may be reduced to a very simple organization, and a very inexpensive
one; a few plain duties to be performed by a few servants."
Thomas Jefferson
Source: March 1800
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.B95A
Cool
Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to
remain cool and unruffled under all circumstances.
Thomas Jefferson
Source:Power Negotiating
Corporations
"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed
corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a
trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country."
Thomas Jefferson, 1812
Source:Liberty Quotes
Correction
"If we keep together we shall be safe, and when error is
so apparent as to become visible to the majority,
they will correct it."
Thomas Jefferson
Dependence
"Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the
germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition."
Thomas Jefferson
Source: Notes on the State of Virginia, Query XIX, 1787
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.0422
Despotism (i.e. Bushism)
"Force (is) the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism."
Thomas Jefferson
Source:http://liberty-tree.ca/qb/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.DE83
An elective despotism was not the government we
fought for, but one which should not only be founded
on true free principles, but in which the powers of
government should be so divided and balanced
among general bodies of magistracy, as that no one
could transcend their legal limits without being
effectually checked and restrained by the others.
Thomas Jefferson
We are not to expect to be translated from despotism
to liberty in a feather bed.
Thomas Jefferson
Debt
"I, however, place economy among the first and most important
republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the
dangers to be feared."
Thomas Jefferson
Source: letter to William Plumer, July 21, 1816
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.1156
...we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual
debt. We must make our election between economy
and liberty or profusion and servitude. If we run into
such debt, as that we must be taxed in our meat and
in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in
our labors and our amusements, for our calling and
our creeds...
Thomas Jefferson
"We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.
We must make our election between economy and liberty
or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debt, as
that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in
our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and
our amusements, for our calling and our creeds...
[we will] have no time to think, no means of calling our
miss-managers to account but be glad to obtain subsistence
by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks
of our fellow-sufferers...
And this is the tendency of all human governments.
A departure from principle in one instance becomes a
precedent for [another ]... till the bulk of society
is reduced to be mere automatons of misery...
And the fore-horse of this frightful team is public debt.
Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and
oppression."
Thomas Jefferson
(1743-1826), US Founding Father, drafted the Declaration of
Independence, 3rd US President
Source: Letter to Samuel Kercheval, Monticello, July 12, 1816
http://liberty-tree.ca/qb/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.0564
Declaration of Independence
May [the Declaration of Independence] be to the world,
what I believe it will be (to some parts sooner, to
others later, but finally to all), the signal of arousing
men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance
and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves,
and to assume the blessings and security of
self-government. That form which we have substituted,
restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of
reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened,
or opening, to the rights of man.
Thomas Jefferson
Source: letter to Roger Weightman on June 24, 1826.
It was his last letter, written ten days before his death - July 4th, 1826,
the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence
We hold these truths to be self-evident,--that all
men are created equal; that they are endowed by
their Creator with certain unalienable rights;
that among these are Life, Liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness.
- Declaration of Independence of the
United States of America
When in the Course of human Events, it becomes
necessary for one People to dissolve the Political
Bonds which have connected them with another,
and to assume among the Powers of the Earth,
the separate and equal Station to which the Laws
of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them,
a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind
requires that they should declare the causes
which impel them to the Separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident,
that all men are created equal, that they are
endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable Rights, that among these are Life,
Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to
secure these rights, Governments are instituted
among Men, deriving their just powers from the
consent of the governed. That whenever any Form
of Government becomes destructive to these ends,
it is the Right of the People to alter or to
abolish it, and to institute new Government,
having its foundation on such principles and
organizing its powers in such form, as to them
shall seem seem most likely to effect their
Safety and Happiness. . . .
Thomas Jefferson
Declaration of Rights
"By a declaration of rights, I mean one which
shall stipulate freedom of religion, freedom
of the press, freedom of commerce against
monopolies, trial by juries in all cases, no
suspensions of the habeas corpus, no standing
armies. These are fetters against doing evil
which no honest government should decline."
Thomas Jefferson
Source:Liberty Quotes
Delay
Delay is preferable to error.
Education
"I have indeed two great measures at heart,
without which no republic can maintain itself in strength:
1. That of general education, to enable every man to judge
for himself what will secure or endanger his freedom.
2. To divide every county into hundreds, of such size that all
the children of each will be within reach of a
central school in it."
Thomas Jefferson
Source: in a letter to John Tyler, 1810.
The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Memorial Edition 12:393
(Lipscomb and Bergh, editors), 1903-04
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.2AC9
"I... [proposed] three distinct grades of education,
reaching all classes.
1. Elementary schools for all children generally,
rich and poor.
2. Colleges for a middle degree of instruction, calculated for
the common purposes of life and such as should be desirable
for all who were in easy circumstances.
And 3d. an ultimate grade for teaching the sciences generally
and in their highest degree...
The expenses of [the elementary] schools should be borne by the
inhabitants of the county, every one in proportion to his general
tax-rate. This would throw on wealth the education of the poor."
-- Thomas Jefferson
Source: Thomas Jefferson Autobiography, 1821
The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Memorial Edition 1:70
(Lipscomb and Bergh, editors), 1903-04
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.62B3
"Is it a right or a duty in society to take care of their
infant members in opposition to the will of the parent?
How far does this right and duty extend? --to guard the
life of the infant, his property, his instruction,
his morals? The Roman father was supreme in all these:
we draw a line, but where? --public sentiment does not
seem to have traced it precisely... It is better to
tolerate the rare instance of a parent refusing to let
his child be educated, than to shock the common feelings
and ideas by the forcible asportation and education of
the infant against the will of the father... What is
proposed... is to remove the objection of expense,
by offering education gratis, and to strengthen parental
excitement by the disfranchisement of his child while
uneducated. Society has certainly a right to disavow him
whom they offer, and are permitted to qualify for the
duties of a citizen. If we do not force instruction,
let us at least strengthen the motives to receive it
when offered."
Thomas Jefferson
Source: Note to Elementary School Act, 1817
The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Memorial Edition 17:423
(Lipscomb and Bergh, editors), 1903-04
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.2917
Election Example
"I could think of no worse example for nations abroad,
who for the first time were trying to put free
electoral procedures into effect, than that of the
United States wrangling over the results of our
presidential election, and even suggesting that the
presidency itself could be stolen by thievery at the
ballot box."
-- Thomas Jefferson
(1743-1826), US Founding Father, drafted the Declaration of
Independence, 3rd US President Source:Liberty Quotes
Elite
"The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history,
whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite."
Thomas Jefferson
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.992B
Environment
"While the farmer holds the title to the land,
actually, it belongs to all the people because
civilization itself rests upon the soil."
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
quoted in the Des Moines Register, July 8, 1979.
http://www.epa.gov/Region2/library/quotes.htm
Enemy
"An enemy generally says and believes what he wishes."
Thomas Jefferson
Equal Rights
Equal rights for all, special privileges for none.
Thomas Jefferson
Expectations
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, it expects
what never was and never will be.
Thomas Jefferson
Error and Government
"It is error alone which needs the support of government.
Truth can stand by itself."
-- Thomas Jefferson
Source: Notes on the State of Virginia, 1782
Fear
When the government fears the people there is liberty;
when the people fear the government there is tyranny.
Thomas Jefferson
I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be
that men may be trusted to govern themselves
without a master.
Thomas Jefferson
God who gave us life, gave us liberty. And can the
liberties of a nation be thought secure if we have
removed their only firm basis: a conviction in the
minds of men that these liberties are the gift of God?
That they are not to be violated but with His wrath?
Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that
God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever.
Thomas Jefferson
Federal Judiciary
"The germ of dissolution of our federal government is
in...the federal judiciary; an irresponsible body, (for
impeachment is scarcely a scare-crow,) working like
gravity by night and by day, gaining a little to-day
and a little to-morrow, and advancing its noiseless
step like a thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until
all shall be usurped from the States."
Thomas Jefferson, 1821
"The judiciary of the United States is the subtle corps of sappers and miners
constantly working under ground to undermine the foundations of our
confederated fabric. They are construing our constitution from a coordination
of a general and special government to a general and supreme one alone. This
will lay all things at their feet... We shall see if they are bold enough to
take the daring stride their five lawyers have lately taken. If they do,
then... I will say, that 'against this every man should raise his voice,' and
more, should uplift his arm."
Thomas Jefferson
Source: (Letter to T. Ritchie, 1820).
THE POLITICAL WRITINGS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 152-153 (Dumbauld Ed. 1955)
Fence Setters
"Where the principle of difference [between political
parties] is as substantial and as strongly pronounced
as between the republicans and the monocrats of our
country, I hold it as honorable to take a firm and
decided part and as immoral to pursue a middle line,
as between the parties of honest men
and rogues, into which every country is divided."
Thomas Jefferson
Freedom
A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain
men from injuring one another, shall leave them
otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of
industry and improvement.
Thomas Jefferson
"If a nation expects to be ignorant -- and free --
in a state of civilization, it expects what never
was and never will be."
Thomas Jefferson
Future
"I predict future happiness for Americans
if they can prevent the government
from wasting the labors of the people
under the pretense of taking care of them."
Thomas Jefferson
Source:Liberty Quotes
God's Purpose
"The Giver of life gave it for happiness and not
for wretchedness." --
Thomas Jefferson
Government
"The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest."
Thomas Jefferson
Source:Liberty Quotes
"That government is best which governs the least,
because its people discipline themselves."
Thomas Jefferson
"Government can do something for the people
only in proportion as it can do something to the people. "
Thomas Jefferson
Source:http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.A21E
I think we have more machinery of government than
is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor
of the industrious.
Thomas Jefferson
The happiness and prosperity of our citizens is
the only legitimate object of government.
Thomas Jefferson
The way to have good and safe government is not to
trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many,
distributing to everyone exactly the functions in which
he is competent....
- To let the National Government be entrusted with the
defense of the nation, and its foreign and federal relations ...
- The State Governments with the Civil Rights, Laws, Police
and administration of what concerns the State generally.
- The Counties with the local concerns, and each ward direct
the interests within itself.
It is by dividing and subdividing these Republics from the great
national one down through all its subordinations until it ends in the
administration of everyman's farm by himself, by placing under everyone
what his own eye may superintend, that all will be done for the best."
Thomas Jefferson
The most sacred of the duties of a government [is] to
do equal and impartial justice to all its citizens.
Thomas Jefferson
"A government is republican in proportion as every member composing it
has his equal voice in the direction of its concerns, not indeed in person,
which would be impracticable beyond the limits of a city or small township,
but by representatives chosen by himself and responsible to him
at short periods."
Thomas Jefferson
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.7262
"If the people let government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take,
their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny."
Thomas Jefferson
Source:http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.A09D
Governmental Acts
Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the
accidental opinion of the day; but a series of
oppressions, begun at a distinguished period,
and pursued unalterably through every change
of ministers (adminstrators) too plainly proves a
deliberate, systematic plan of reducing us to slavery.
Thomas Jefferson
Great Innovations
Great innovations should not be forced on slender majorities.
Thomas Jefferson
Source:Letter to Thaddeus Kosciusko, 1808
Habeas Corpus
Why suspend the habeas corpus in insurrections
and rebellions? Examine the history of England. See
how few of the cases of the suspension of the habeas
corpus law have been worthy of that suspension.
They have been either real treasons, wherein the
parties might as well have been charged at once, or
sham plots, where it was shameful they should ever
have been suspected. Yet for the few cases wherein
the suspension of the habeas corpus has done real
good, that operation is now become habitual and the
minds of the nation almost prepared to live under
its constant suspension.
Thomas Jefferson
Hardest Job
To seek out the best [persons to serve in the government]
though the whole Union, we must resort to the information
which from the best of men, acting disinterestedly and with
ther purest motives, is something incorrect....No duty the
Executive had to perform was so trying as to put the right
man in the right place.
Thomas Jefferson
Source: Letter to Elias Shipman, Jul 12, 1801
History
History, in general, only informs us what
bad government is.
Thomas Jefferson
A morsel of genuine history is a thing so rare as
to be always valuable.
Thomas Jefferson
Impeachment
"Experience has already shown that the impeachment
the Constitution has provided is not even a scarecrow."
Thomas Jefferson
Source:Liberty Quotes
Information
Whenever people are well-informed they can be
trusted with their own government.
Thomas Jefferson
Ingenuity Gone Bad
"There is no act, however virtuous, for which
ingenuity may not find some bad motive."
Thomas Jefferson
Source: letter to Edward Dowse, April 19, 1803
Jesus
The day will come when the mystical generation of
Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his Father, in the
womb of a virgin will be classified with the fable of
the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.
But we may hope that the dawn of reason and
freedom of thought in these United States will do
away with this artificial scaffolding and restore to us
the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most
venerated Reformer of human errors.
Thomas Jefferson
Source: Letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823
Law and Laws
"Laws are made for men of ordinary understanding, and should, therefore,
be construed by the ordinary rules of common sense. Their meaning is not
to be sought for in metaphysical subtleties, which may make anything mean
everything or nothing at pleasure."
Thomas Jefferson
Source:http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.8B4A
"Laws provide against injury from others, but not from ourselves."
Thomas Jefferson
Source: Notes on Religion
"Laws made by common consent must not be
trampled on by individuals."
Thomas Jefferson
Bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the
will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will
to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority
possess their equal rights, which equal law must
protect, and to violate would be oppression.
Thomas Jefferson
The study of the law is useful in a variety of points of view.
It qualifies a man to be useful to himself, to his neighbours,
and to the public.
Thomas Jefferson
Source:Letter to T. M. Randolph, May 30, 1790
Liberty
"I would rather be exposed to the
inconveniences attending too much liberty
than to those attending too small a degree of it."
Thomas Jefferson
Source: Letter, 23 December 1791
That liberty [is pure] which is to go to all, and not to
the few or the rich alone.
Thomas Jefferson
The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at
the same time.
Thomas Jefferson
"It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience
for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case
of others."
Thomas Jefferson
Liberty is to the collective body,
what health is to every individual body.
Without health no pleasure can be tasted by man;
without liberty, no happiness can be enjoyed by society."
Thomas Jefferson
3rd US President
"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our
will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of
others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law,' because
law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it
violates the rights of the individual."
Thomas Jefferson
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.7369
Lie
"It is a great importance to set a resolution, not to be shaken,
never to tell an untruth. There is no vice so mean, so pitiful,
so contemptible and he who permits himself to tell a lie once,
finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at
length it becomes habitual, he tells lies without attending to
it, and truths without the world's believing him. This falsehood
of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves
all it's good dispositions."
Thomas Jefferson
Source:http://liberty-tree.ca/qb/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.712F
Luck
I find that the harder I work, the more luck
I seem to have.
Thomas Jefferson
Keeping Faith
"I never did, or countenanced, in public life, a single act inconsistent
with the strictest good faith; having never believed there was one
code of morality for a public, and another for a private man."
Thomas Jefferson
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.E578
Majority
"[Bear] always in mind that a nation ceases to be
republican only when the will of the majority
ceases to be the law."
Thomas Jefferson
Mankind
"The mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs,
nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately,
by the grace of God."
Thomas Jefferson
Source:http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.736D
"What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man!
Who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment & death itself
in vindication of his own liberty, and the next moment ... inflict on
his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery
than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose."
Thomas Jefferson
Source: letter to Jean Nicholas Demeunier, January 24, 1786
Merchants
Merchants have no country.
Thomas Jefferson
Source:Letter to H. Spafford, Mar 17, 1814
Money
Money, not morality, is the principle commerce
of civilized nations.
Thomas Jefferson
Natural Process
The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield
and government to gain ground.
Thomas Jefferson
Nature's Laws
"It is not only vain, but wicked, in a legislature
to frame laws in opposition to the laws of nature,
and to arm them with the terrors of death.
This is truly creating crimes in order to punish them."
-- Thomas Jefferson
Source: Note on the Crimes Bill, 1779
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.A0A6
Never Existed
An association of men who will not quarrel with one another is a
thing which never yet existed, from the greatest confederacy of
nations down to a town-meeting or a vestry.
Thomas Jefferson
Source:Letter to John Taylor, 1798
Noise
An individual, thinking himself injured, makes more
noise than a State.
Thomas Jefferson
Not The Governments Business
The opinions of men are not the object of civil government,
nor under its jurisdiction.
Thomas Jefferson
Source:Virginia Statute Of Religious Freedom
Oath
I have sworn upon the altar of Almighty God eternal
hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind
of man.
Thomas Jefferson
Obedience
Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.
Thomas Jefferson
Observation
"It is an encouraging observation that no good
measure was ever proposed which, if duly pursued,
failed to prevail in the end."
Thomas Jefferson
On Jesus and the Church
"[My views on Christianity] are the result of a life of inquiry
& reflection, and very different from that anti-Christian system
imputed to me by those who know nothing of my opinions. To the
corruptions of Christianity I am indeed opposed; but not to the
genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian, in the only
sense he wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines,
in preference to all others; ascribing to himself every human
excellence; & believing he never claimed any other."
Thomas Jefferson
Source: letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush, Apr. 21, 1803
"Nothing can be more exactly and seriously true than what is there
[the very words only of Jesus] stated; that but a short time elapsed
after the death of the great reformer of the Jewish religion, before
his principles were departed from by those who professed to be his
special servants, and perverted into an engine for enslaving mankind,
and aggrandising their oppressors in Church and State; that the purest
system of morals ever before preached to man, has been adulterated
and sophisticated by artificial constructions, into a mere contrivance
to filch wealth and power to themselves; that rational men not
being able to swallow their impious heresies, in order to force them
down their throats, they raise the hue and cry of infidelity, while
themselves are the greatest obstacles to the advancement of the real
doctrines of Jesus, and do in fact constitute the real Anti-Christ."
Thomas Jefferson
Source: letter to Samuel Kerchreview, January 19, 1810
"The truth is that the greatest enemies to the doctrines of Jesus are
those calling themselves the expositors of them, who have perverted
them for the structure of a system of fancy absolutely incomprehensible,
and without any foundation in his genuine words. And the day will come
when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father
in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation
of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But we may hope that the
dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away
with all this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive
and genuine doctrines of this the most venerated reformer of human errors."
Thomas Jefferson
Source: letter to John Adams, from Monticello, April 11, 1823
One Man One Vote
Equal representation is so fundamental a principal in a true
republic that no prejudice can justify its violation because
the prejudices themselves cannot be justified.
Thomas Jeffersom, 1819
Source:The Supreme Court in American History pp162
Opinion
Monuments of the safety with which errors of
opinion may be tolerated where reason is left
free to combat it.
- in his first inaugural address
Parties
"Men by their constitutions are naturally divided
into two parties: 1. Those who fear and distrust
the people, and wish to draw all powers from them
into the hands of the higher classes. 2. Those who
identify themselves with the people, have confidence
in them, cherish and consider them as the most
honest and safe, although not the most wise
depositary of the public interests. In every country
these two parties exist, and in every one where they
are free to think, speak, and write, they will declare
themselves. Call them, therefore, Liberals and Serviles,
Jacobins and Ultras, Whigs and Tories, Republicans
and Federalists, Aristocrats and Democrats, or by
whatever name you please, they are the same
parties still and pursue the same object. The last
one of Aristocrats and Democrats is the true one
expressing the essence of all."
Thomas Jefferson
In every free and deliberating society, there must,
from the nature of man, be opposite parties, and
violent dissensions and discords; and one of these,
for the most part, must prevail over the other for a
longer or shorter time."
Thomas Jefferson
Were parties here divided merely by a greediness for
office, as in England, to take part with either would
be unworthy of a reasonable or moral man.
Thomas Jefferson
Source:Letter to Willian Giles, 12-31-1779
Patriot
"The patriot, like the Christian, must learn to bear revilings and persecutions
as a part of his duty; and in proportion as the trial is severe, firmness under
it becomes more requisite and praiseworthy. It requires, indeed,
self-command. But that will be fortified in proportion as the calls for its
exercise are repeated."
Thomas Jefferson
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.E35A
Peace
"And say, finally, whether peace is best preserved by giving energy to the
government or information to the people. This last is the most legitimate
engine of government. Educate and inform the whole mass of people. Enable them
to see that it is their interest to preserve peace and order, and they will
preserve them. And it requires no very high degree of education to convince
them of this. They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our
liberty."
-- Thomas Jefferson
US Founding Father, drafted the Declaration of Independence, 3rd US President
Source: Letter to James Madison, Paris, December 20, 1787. The Political Writings
Of Thomas Jefferson 68 (Dumbauld Ed. 1955)
Pillars
Agriculture, manufacturers, commerce, and navigation,
the four pillars of our prosperity, are then most thriving
when left most free to individual enterprise.
Thomas Jefferson
Politics
Nature intended me for the tranquil pursuits of
science, by rendering them my supreme delight.
But the enormities of the times in which I have
lived have forced me to commit myself on the
boisterous ocean of political passions.
Thomas Jefferson
Power
Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.
Thomas Jefferson
I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of
the society but the people themselves; and if we think
them not enlightened enough to exercise their control
with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take
it from them, but to inform their discretion.
Thomas Jefferson
In questions of power, then, let no more be said of
confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief
by the chains of the Constitution.
Thomas Jefferson
"Experience hath shewn,
that even under the best forms [of government]
those entrusted with power have, in time,
and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny."
Thomas Jefferson
"An honest man can feel no pleasure
in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens."
Thomas Jefferson
Source: letter to John Melish, January 13, 1813
http://liberty-tree.ca/qb/9ccdbffd871f44c185256e780079de89
Press Truths
Perhaps an editor might begin a reformation in some such way as this. Divide his paper
into 4 chapters, heading the 1st, Truths. 2d, Probabilities. 3d, Possibilities. 4th, Lies.
The first chapter would be very short, as it would contain little more than authentic
papers, and information from such sources as the editor would be willing to risk his own
reputation for their truth. The 2d would contain what, from a mature consideration of all
circumstances, his judgment should conclude to be probably true. This, however, should
rather contain too little than too much. The 3d & 4th should be professedly for those
readers who would rather have lies for their money than the blank paper they
would occupy.
Thomas Jefferson
Source:Letter to John Norvell, June 11, 1807
Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on
in a newspaper.
Thomas Jefferson
Nothing can now be believed which is seen in the
newpaper. Truth itself become suspicious by being
put into that polluted vehicle.
Thomas Jefferson
The basis of our government being the opinion of the
people, the very first object should be to keep that right;
and were it left to me to decide whether we should
have a government without newspapers, or newspapers
without a government, I should not hesitate for a moment
to prefer the latter.
Thomas Jefferson
Public Trust
"When a man assumes a public trust,
he should consider himself as public property."
Thomas Jefferson
Source:http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.7131
Question
Yes, we did produce a near-perfect republic. But will
they keep it? Or will they, in the enjoyment of plenty,
lose the memory of freedom? Material abundance
without character is the path of destruction.
Thomas Jefferson
Rathers
"I had rather be shut up in a very modest cottage with my books,
my family and a few old friends, dining on simple bacon, and
letting the world roll on as it liked, than to occupy the most
splendid post, which any human power can give."
Thomas Jefferson
Source: letter to Alexander Donald, February 7, 1788
http://liberty-tree.ca/qb/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.115D
Reason
"If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union
or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as
monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be
tolerated where reason is left free to combat it."
Thomas Jefferson
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.9A94
Rebellion
"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain
occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive.
It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to
be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then."
Thomas Jefferson
Source: letter to Abigail Adams, February 22, 1787; reproduced in
Thomas Jefferson, Writings (The Library of America, 1984), p. 889-890
"I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing,
and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.
Unsuccessful rebellions, indeed, generally establish the
encroachments on the rights of the people which have produced them.
An observation of this truth should render honest republican
governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions as not to
discourage them too much. It is a medicine necessary for the
sound health of the government."
Thomas Jefferson
Source:Letter to James Madison, Jan 30, 1787
"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion.
The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is
wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts
they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions,
it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ...
And what country can preserve its liberties, if it's rulers are not
warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of
resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as
to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost
in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from
time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
It is its natural manure."
Thomas Jefferson
Source: November 13, 1787, letter to William S. Smith, quoted in
Padover's Jefferson On Democracy
"I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive. It
places the governors indeed more at their ease at the expense of the people.
The late rebellion in Massachusetts has given much more alarm than I think it
should have done. Calculate that one rebellion in thirteen States in the course
of eleven years is but one for each State in a century and a half. No country
should be so long without one. Nor will any degree of power in the hands of the
government prevent insurrections. In England, where the hand of power is
heavier than with us, there are seldom half a dozen years without an
insurrection. In France, where it is still heavier but less despotic, as
Montesquieu supposes, than in some other countries and where there are always
two or three hundred thousand men ready to crush insurrections, there have been
three in the course of the three years I have been here, in every one of which
greater numbers were engaged than in Massachusetts."
-- Thomas Jefferson
Source: Letter to James Madison, Paris, December 20, 1787.
The Political Writings Of Thomas Jefferson 67-68 (Dumbauld Ed. 1955)
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.A496
Religon
Question with boldness even the existence of a God;
because, if there be one, he must more approve of
the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.
Do not be frightened from this inquiry from any fear
of its consequences. If it ends in the belief that
there is no God, you will find incitements to virtue
in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its
exercise...
Thomas Jefferson
Source: 1787 letter to his nephew
The legitimate powers of government extend to such
acts as are only injurious to others. But it does me
no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods,
or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
Thomas Jefferson
Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious
opinions, any more than our opinions in physics
or geometry.
Thomas Jefferson
I do not find in orthodox Christianity one
redeeming feature.
Thomas Jefferson
In every country and every age, the priest has
been hostile to Liberty.
Thomas Jefferson
"The hocus-pocus phantasy of a God, like another Cerberus,
with one body and three heads, had its birth and growth in
the blood of thousands and thousands of martyrs."
Thomas Jefferson
Source:Jefferson s Works, Vol. IV, 360, Randolph's ed.
"[The clergy] believe that any portion of power confided to
me [as President] will be exerted in opposition to their
schemes. And they believe rightly: for I have sworn upon the
altar of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny
over the mind of man. But this is all they have to fear from
me: and enough, too, in their opinion."
Thomas Jefferson
Source:Letter to Benjamin Rush, 1800.
"Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women,
and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have
been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not
advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the
effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools and
the other half hypocrites."
Thomas Jefferson
Source:Notes on the State of Virginia
"Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every
fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence
of a god; because, if there be one, he must approve the homage
of reason rather than of blind-folded fear. Do not be
frightened from this inquiry by any fear of its consequences....
If it end in a belief that there is no god, you will find
incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel
in its exercise and in the love of others it will
procure for you."
Thomas Jefferson
Source:Letter to Peter Carr, 10 Aug. 1787.
(original capitalization of "god" retained)
"History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden
people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the
lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as
religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own
purposes."
Thomas Jefferson
Source:Letter to Alexander von Humboldt, 1813
Reputation
No man will ever bring out of the Presidency the
reputation which carries him into it.
Thomas Jefferson
Resistance
"What country can preserve its liberties,
if its rulers are not warned from time to time that
this people preserve the spirit of resistance?
Let them take arms."
Thomas Jefferson
Source: in a letter to William S. Smith, 13 November 1787
http://liberty-tree.ca/qb/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.A0A7
Rights
"It had become an universal and almost uncontroverted position
in the several States, that the purposes of society do not require
a surrender of all our rights to our ordinary governors; that
there are certain portions of right not necessary to enable them
to carry on an effective government, and which experience has
nevertheless proved they will be constantly encroaching on, if
submitted to them; that there are also certain fences which
experience has proved peculiarly efficacious against wrong,
and rarely obstructive of right, which yet the governing powers
have ever shown a disposition to weaken and remove. Of the first
kind, for instance, is freedom of religion; of the second,
trial by jury, habeas corpus laws, free presses."
Thomas Jefferson
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.58AA
[Our] principles [are] founded on the immovable basis
of equal right and reason.
Thomas Jefferson
Man [is] a rational animal, endowed by nature with
rights and with an innate sense of justice.
Thomas Jefferson
A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the
laws of nature, and not as the gift of their
chief magistrate."
Thomas Jefferson
Nothing... is unchangeable but the inherent and
unalienable rights of man."
Thomas Jefferson
Sedition Law
"I discharge every person under punishment or prosecution
under the Sedition Law, because I considered, and now
consider, that law to be a nullity as absolute and
palpable as if Congress had ordered us to fall down and
worship a golden image."
Thomas Jefferson
Source: Letter to Abigail Adams, 22 July 1804
Self-evident
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men
are created equal, that they are endowed by their
Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among
these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
Thomas Jefferson
Service
The greatest service which can be rendered any
country is to add a useful plant to its culture.
Thomas Jefferson
Starvation
I am for a government rigorously frugal and simple.
Were we directed from Washington when to sow,
when to reap, we should soon want bread.
Thomas Jefferson
Super Majority
"It would not be for the public good to have [a majority
in Congress of one party] greater [than] two to one."
Thomas Jefferson
Supreme Court
"You seem ... to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of
all constitutional questions; a very dangerous doctrine indeed,
and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy.
Our judges are as honest as other men, and not more so. They have,
with others, the same passions for party, for power, and the
privilege of their corps.... Their power [is] the more dangerous as they
are in office for life, and not responsible, as the other functionaries
are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such
single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the
corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots.
It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign
within themselves."
Thomas Jefferson
US Founding Father, drafted the Declaration of Independence, 3rd US President
Source: The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Letter to William Jarvis
(September 28, 1820).
Taxes
To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he
disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.
Thomas Jefferson
Source: Virginia Statutes of Religious Freedom, 1779
To lay taxes to provide for the general welfare of
the United States, that is to say, 'to lay taxes for
the purpose of providing for the general welfare.'
For the laying of taxes is the power, and the general
welfare the purpose for which the power is to be
exercised. They are not to lay taxes ad libitum for
any purpose they please; but only to pay the
debts or provide for the welfare of the Union."
Thomas Jefferson
US Founding Father, drafted the Declaration of
Independence,
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/
Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.B6C2
"We are all doubtless bound to contribute a certain portion of our income to
the support of charitable and other useful public institutions. But it is a
part of our duty also to apply our contributions in the most effectual way we
can to secure this object. The question then is whether this will not be better
done by each of us appropriating our whole contribution to the institutions
within our reach, under our own eye, and over which we can exercise some useful
control? Or would it be better that each should divide the sum he can spare
among all the institutions of his State or the United States? Reason and the
interest of these institutions themselves, certainly decide in favor of the
former practice."
-- Thomas Jefferson
(1743-1826), US Founding Father, drafted the Declaration of Independence, 3rd US President
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.BF6C
Trust
"Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone.
The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories."
Thomas Jefferson
Source:http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.80E3
Truth
"And, finally, that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself;
that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and
has nothing to fear from the conflict unless by human interposition
disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate,
errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them."
-- Thomas Jefferson
(1743-1826), US Founding Father, drafted the Declaration of Independence, 3rd US President
Source: The Virginia Act For Establishing Religious Freedom, 1786
http://religiousfreedom.lib.virginia.edu/sacred/vaact.html
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.A0A8
"The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them;
inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to the truth than he whose mind
is filled with falsehoods and errors."
Thomas Jefferson
Source: Letter to John Novell, June 11, 1807
"Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone.
The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories."
Thomas Jefferson
Source:http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.80E3
Vigilance
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
Thomas Jefferson
Unite
Let us, then, fellow citizens, unite with one heart and
one mind. Let us restore to social intercourse that
harmony and affection without which liberty and even
life itself are but dreary things. And let us reflect that
having banished from our land that religious intolerance
under which mankind so long bled, we have yet gained
little if we counternance a political intolerance as
despotic, as wicked, and capable of a bitter and
bloody persecutions.
Thomas Jefferson
War Of 1812
"Bonaparte hates our government because it is a living libel
on his, and the English hate us because they think our
prosperity filched from theirs."
Thomas Jefferson
Source:James Madison, A Biography by Ralph Ketcham
Zealot
A single zealot may commence persecutor,
and better men be his victims.
Thomas Jefferson
Source:Notes on the State of Virginia
What Can I say?
This truely is one of the GREATEST men that has ever
walked the face of the planet. Trying to build a Quote
page of Jefferson is like building a Quote Page of
the teachings of Jesus Christ in a sentence.
Simply can't be done.
I can not do him justice here in my quote pages.
Please hit the link aboveand go see a page
that covers this great American better than
I ever could.
Midnightflyer
Declaration of Independence May [the Declaration of Independence] be to the world, what I believe it will be (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all), the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government. That form which we have substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. Thomas Jefferson Source: letter to Roger Weightman on June 24, 1826. It was his last letter, written ten days before his death - July 4th, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence We hold these truths to be self-evident,--that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. - Declaration of Independence of the United States of America When in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, having its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. . . . Thomas Jefferson Declaration of Rights "By a declaration of rights, I mean one which shall stipulate freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of commerce against monopolies, trial by juries in all cases, no suspensions of the habeas corpus, no standing armies. These are fetters against doing evil which no honest government should decline." Thomas Jefferson Source:Liberty Quotes Delay Delay is preferable to error. Education "I have indeed two great measures at heart, without which no republic can maintain itself in strength: 1. That of general education, to enable every man to judge for himself what will secure or endanger his freedom. 2. To divide every county into hundreds, of such size that all the children of each will be within reach of a central school in it." Thomas Jefferson Source: in a letter to John Tyler, 1810. The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Memorial Edition 12:393 (Lipscomb and Bergh, editors), 1903-04 http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.2AC9 "I... [proposed] three distinct grades of education, reaching all classes. 1. Elementary schools for all children generally, rich and poor. 2. Colleges for a middle degree of instruction, calculated for the common purposes of life and such as should be desirable for all who were in easy circumstances. And 3d. an ultimate grade for teaching the sciences generally and in their highest degree... The expenses of [the elementary] schools should be borne by the inhabitants of the county, every one in proportion to his general tax-rate. This would throw on wealth the education of the poor." -- Thomas Jefferson Source: Thomas Jefferson Autobiography, 1821 The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Memorial Edition 1:70 (Lipscomb and Bergh, editors), 1903-04 http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.62B3 "Is it a right or a duty in society to take care of their infant members in opposition to the will of the parent? How far does this right and duty extend? --to guard the life of the infant, his property, his instruction, his morals? The Roman father was supreme in all these: we draw a line, but where? --public sentiment does not seem to have traced it precisely... It is better to tolerate the rare instance of a parent refusing to let his child be educated, than to shock the common feelings and ideas by the forcible asportation and education of the infant against the will of the father... What is proposed... is to remove the objection of expense, by offering education gratis, and to strengthen parental excitement by the disfranchisement of his child while uneducated. Society has certainly a right to disavow him whom they offer, and are permitted to qualify for the duties of a citizen. If we do not force instruction, let us at least strengthen the motives to receive it when offered." Thomas Jefferson Source: Note to Elementary School Act, 1817 The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Memorial Edition 17:423 (Lipscomb and Bergh, editors), 1903-04 http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.2917 Election Example "I could think of no worse example for nations abroad, who for the first time were trying to put free electoral procedures into effect, than that of the United States wrangling over the results of our presidential election, and even suggesting that the presidency itself could be stolen by thievery at the ballot box." -- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), US Founding Father, drafted the Declaration of Independence, 3rd US President Source:Liberty Quotes Elite "The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite." Thomas Jefferson http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.992B Environment "While the farmer holds the title to the land, actually, it belongs to all the people because civilization itself rests upon the soil." Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) quoted in the Des Moines Register, July 8, 1979. http://www.epa.gov/Region2/library/quotes.htm Enemy "An enemy generally says and believes what he wishes." Thomas Jefferson Equal Rights Equal rights for all, special privileges for none. Thomas Jefferson Expectations If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, it expects what never was and never will be. Thomas Jefferson Error and Government "It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself." -- Thomas Jefferson Source: Notes on the State of Virginia, 1782 Fear When the government fears the people there is liberty; when the people fear the government there is tyranny. Thomas Jefferson I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master. Thomas Jefferson
God who gave us life, gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure if we have removed their only firm basis: a conviction in the minds of men that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever. Thomas Jefferson Federal Judiciary "The germ of dissolution of our federal government is in...the federal judiciary; an irresponsible body, (for impeachment is scarcely a scare-crow,) working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little to-day and a little to-morrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped from the States." Thomas Jefferson, 1821 "The judiciary of the United States is the subtle corps of sappers and miners constantly working under ground to undermine the foundations of our confederated fabric. They are construing our constitution from a coordination of a general and special government to a general and supreme one alone. This will lay all things at their feet... We shall see if they are bold enough to take the daring stride their five lawyers have lately taken. If they do, then... I will say, that 'against this every man should raise his voice,' and more, should uplift his arm." Thomas Jefferson Source: (Letter to T. Ritchie, 1820). THE POLITICAL WRITINGS OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 152-153 (Dumbauld Ed. 1955) Fence Setters "Where the principle of difference [between political parties] is as substantial and as strongly pronounced as between the republicans and the monocrats of our country, I hold it as honorable to take a firm and decided part and as immoral to pursue a middle line, as between the parties of honest men and rogues, into which every country is divided." Thomas Jefferson Freedom A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement. Thomas Jefferson "If a nation expects to be ignorant -- and free -- in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson Future "I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them." Thomas Jefferson Source:Liberty Quotes
God's Purpose "The Giver of life gave it for happiness and not for wretchedness." -- Thomas Jefferson Government "The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest." Thomas Jefferson Source:Liberty Quotes "That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves." Thomas Jefferson "Government can do something for the people only in proportion as it can do something to the people. " Thomas Jefferson Source:http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.A21E I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious. Thomas Jefferson The happiness and prosperity of our citizens is the only legitimate object of government. Thomas Jefferson The way to have good and safe government is not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to everyone exactly the functions in which he is competent.... - To let the National Government be entrusted with the defense of the nation, and its foreign and federal relations ... - The State Governments with the Civil Rights, Laws, Police and administration of what concerns the State generally. - The Counties with the local concerns, and each ward direct the interests within itself. It is by dividing and subdividing these Republics from the great national one down through all its subordinations until it ends in the administration of everyman's farm by himself, by placing under everyone what his own eye may superintend, that all will be done for the best." Thomas Jefferson The most sacred of the duties of a government [is] to do equal and impartial justice to all its citizens. Thomas Jefferson "A government is republican in proportion as every member composing it has his equal voice in the direction of its concerns, not indeed in person, which would be impracticable beyond the limits of a city or small township, but by representatives chosen by himself and responsible to him at short periods." Thomas Jefferson http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.7262 "If the people let government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny." Thomas Jefferson Source:http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.A09D Governmental Acts Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of the day; but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers (adminstrators) too plainly proves a deliberate, systematic plan of reducing us to slavery. Thomas Jefferson Great Innovations Great innovations should not be forced on slender majorities. Thomas Jefferson Source:Letter to Thaddeus Kosciusko, 1808 Habeas Corpus Why suspend the habeas corpus in insurrections and rebellions? Examine the history of England. See how few of the cases of the suspension of the habeas corpus law have been worthy of that suspension. They have been either real treasons, wherein the parties might as well have been charged at once, or sham plots, where it was shameful they should ever have been suspected. Yet for the few cases wherein the suspension of the habeas corpus has done real good, that operation is now become habitual and the minds of the nation almost prepared to live under its constant suspension. Thomas Jefferson Hardest Job To seek out the best [persons to serve in the government] though the whole Union, we must resort to the information which from the best of men, acting disinterestedly and with ther purest motives, is something incorrect....No duty the Executive had to perform was so trying as to put the right man in the right place. Thomas Jefferson Source: Letter to Elias Shipman, Jul 12, 1801 History History, in general, only informs us what bad government is. Thomas Jefferson A morsel of genuine history is a thing so rare as to be always valuable. Thomas Jefferson Impeachment "Experience has already shown that the impeachment the Constitution has provided is not even a scarecrow." Thomas Jefferson Source:Liberty Quotes Information Whenever people are well-informed they can be trusted with their own government. Thomas Jefferson Ingenuity Gone Bad "There is no act, however virtuous, for which ingenuity may not find some bad motive." Thomas Jefferson Source: letter to Edward Dowse, April 19, 1803 Jesus The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his Father, in the womb of a virgin will be classified with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated Reformer of human errors. Thomas Jefferson Source: Letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823 Law and Laws "Laws are made for men of ordinary understanding, and should, therefore, be construed by the ordinary rules of common sense. Their meaning is not to be sought for in metaphysical subtleties, which may make anything mean everything or nothing at pleasure." Thomas Jefferson Source:http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.8B4A "Laws provide against injury from others, but not from ourselves." Thomas Jefferson Source: Notes on Religion "Laws made by common consent must not be trampled on by individuals." Thomas Jefferson Bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression. Thomas Jefferson The study of the law is useful in a variety of points of view. It qualifies a man to be useful to himself, to his neighbours, and to the public. Thomas Jefferson Source:Letter to T. M. Randolph, May 30, 1790 Liberty "I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it." Thomas Jefferson Source: Letter, 23 December 1791 That liberty [is pure] which is to go to all, and not to the few or the rich alone. Thomas Jefferson The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time. Thomas Jefferson "It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others." Thomas Jefferson Liberty is to the collective body, what health is to every individual body. Without health no pleasure can be tasted by man; without liberty, no happiness can be enjoyed by society." Thomas Jefferson 3rd US President "Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law,' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual." Thomas Jefferson http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.7369 Lie "It is a great importance to set a resolution, not to be shaken, never to tell an untruth. There is no vice so mean, so pitiful, so contemptible and he who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual, he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world's believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all it's good dispositions." Thomas Jefferson Source:http://liberty-tree.ca/qb/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.712F Luck I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have. Thomas Jefferson Keeping Faith "I never did, or countenanced, in public life, a single act inconsistent with the strictest good faith; having never believed there was one code of morality for a public, and another for a private man." Thomas Jefferson http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.E578 Majority "[Bear] always in mind that a nation ceases to be republican only when the will of the majority ceases to be the law." Thomas Jefferson Mankind "The mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God." Thomas Jefferson Source:http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.736D "What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man! Who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment & death itself in vindication of his own liberty, and the next moment ... inflict on his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose." Thomas Jefferson Source: letter to Jean Nicholas Demeunier, January 24, 1786 Merchants Merchants have no country. Thomas Jefferson Source:Letter to H. Spafford, Mar 17, 1814 Money Money, not morality, is the principle commerce of civilized nations. Thomas Jefferson Natural Process The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground. Thomas Jefferson Nature's Laws "It is not only vain, but wicked, in a legislature to frame laws in opposition to the laws of nature, and to arm them with the terrors of death. This is truly creating crimes in order to punish them." -- Thomas Jefferson Source: Note on the Crimes Bill, 1779 http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.A0A6 Never Existed An association of men who will not quarrel with one another is a thing which never yet existed, from the greatest confederacy of nations down to a town-meeting or a vestry. Thomas Jefferson Source:Letter to John Taylor, 1798 Noise An individual, thinking himself injured, makes more noise than a State. Thomas Jefferson
Not The Governments Business The opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction. Thomas Jefferson Source:Virginia Statute Of Religious Freedom Oath I have sworn upon the altar of Almighty God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. Thomas Jefferson Obedience Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God. Thomas Jefferson Observation "It is an encouraging observation that no good measure was ever proposed which, if duly pursued, failed to prevail in the end." Thomas Jefferson On Jesus and the Church "[My views on Christianity] are the result of a life of inquiry & reflection, and very different from that anti-Christian system imputed to me by those who know nothing of my opinions. To the corruptions of Christianity I am indeed opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian, in the only sense he wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others; ascribing to himself every human excellence; & believing he never claimed any other." Thomas Jefferson Source: letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush, Apr. 21, 1803 "Nothing can be more exactly and seriously true than what is there [the very words only of Jesus] stated; that but a short time elapsed after the death of the great reformer of the Jewish religion, before his principles were departed from by those who professed to be his special servants, and perverted into an engine for enslaving mankind, and aggrandising their oppressors in Church and State; that the purest system of morals ever before preached to man, has been adulterated and sophisticated by artificial constructions, into a mere contrivance to filch wealth and power to themselves; that rational men not being able to swallow their impious heresies, in order to force them down their throats, they raise the hue and cry of infidelity, while themselves are the greatest obstacles to the advancement of the real doctrines of Jesus, and do in fact constitute the real Anti-Christ." Thomas Jefferson Source: letter to Samuel Kerchreview, January 19, 1810 "The truth is that the greatest enemies to the doctrines of Jesus are those calling themselves the expositors of them, who have perverted them for the structure of a system of fancy absolutely incomprehensible, and without any foundation in his genuine words. And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with all this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this the most venerated reformer of human errors." Thomas Jefferson Source: letter to John Adams, from Monticello, April 11, 1823 One Man One Vote Equal representation is so fundamental a principal in a true republic that no prejudice can justify its violation because the prejudices themselves cannot be justified. Thomas Jeffersom, 1819 Source:The Supreme Court in American History pp162 Opinion Monuments of the safety with which errors of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it. - in his first inaugural address Parties "Men by their constitutions are naturally divided into two parties: 1. Those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes. 2. Those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe, although not the most wise depositary of the public interests. In every country these two parties exist, and in every one where they are free to think, speak, and write, they will declare themselves. Call them, therefore, Liberals and Serviles, Jacobins and Ultras, Whigs and Tories, Republicans and Federalists, Aristocrats and Democrats, or by whatever name you please, they are the same parties still and pursue the same object. The last one of Aristocrats and Democrats is the true one expressing the essence of all." Thomas Jefferson
In every free and deliberating society, there must, from the nature of man, be opposite parties, and violent dissensions and discords; and one of these, for the most part, must prevail over the other for a longer or shorter time." Thomas Jefferson Were parties here divided merely by a greediness for office, as in England, to take part with either would be unworthy of a reasonable or moral man. Thomas Jefferson Source:Letter to Willian Giles, 12-31-1779 Patriot "The patriot, like the Christian, must learn to bear revilings and persecutions as a part of his duty; and in proportion as the trial is severe, firmness under it becomes more requisite and praiseworthy. It requires, indeed, self-command. But that will be fortified in proportion as the calls for its exercise are repeated." Thomas Jefferson http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.E35A Peace "And say, finally, whether peace is best preserved by giving energy to the government or information to the people. This last is the most legitimate engine of government. Educate and inform the whole mass of people. Enable them to see that it is their interest to preserve peace and order, and they will preserve them. And it requires no very high degree of education to convince them of this. They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty." -- Thomas Jefferson US Founding Father, drafted the Declaration of Independence, 3rd US President Source: Letter to James Madison, Paris, December 20, 1787. The Political Writings Of Thomas Jefferson 68 (Dumbauld Ed. 1955) Pillars Agriculture, manufacturers, commerce, and navigation, the four pillars of our prosperity, are then most thriving when left most free to individual enterprise. Thomas Jefferson Politics Nature intended me for the tranquil pursuits of science, by rendering them my supreme delight. But the enormities of the times in which I have lived have forced me to commit myself on the boisterous ocean of political passions. Thomas Jefferson Power Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. Thomas Jefferson I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion. Thomas Jefferson In questions of power, then, let no more be said of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution. Thomas Jefferson "Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms [of government] those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny." Thomas Jefferson "An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens." Thomas Jefferson Source: letter to John Melish, January 13, 1813 http://liberty-tree.ca/qb/9ccdbffd871f44c185256e780079de89 Press Truths Perhaps an editor might begin a reformation in some such way as this. Divide his paper into 4 chapters, heading the 1st, Truths. 2d, Probabilities. 3d, Possibilities. 4th, Lies. The first chapter would be very short, as it would contain little more than authentic papers, and information from such sources as the editor would be willing to risk his own reputation for their truth. The 2d would contain what, from a mature consideration of all circumstances, his judgment should conclude to be probably true. This, however, should rather contain too little than too much. The 3d & 4th should be professedly for those readers who would rather have lies for their money than the blank paper they would occupy. Thomas Jefferson Source:Letter to John Norvell, June 11, 1807 Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper. Thomas Jefferson Nothing can now be believed which is seen in the newpaper. Truth itself become suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. Thomas Jefferson The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate for a moment to prefer the latter. Thomas Jefferson Public Trust "When a man assumes a public trust, he should consider himself as public property." Thomas Jefferson Source:http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.7131 Question Yes, we did produce a near-perfect republic. But will they keep it? Or will they, in the enjoyment of plenty, lose the memory of freedom? Material abundance without character is the path of destruction. Thomas Jefferson Rathers "I had rather be shut up in a very modest cottage with my books, my family and a few old friends, dining on simple bacon, and letting the world roll on as it liked, than to occupy the most splendid post, which any human power can give." Thomas Jefferson Source: letter to Alexander Donald, February 7, 1788 http://liberty-tree.ca/qb/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.115D Reason "If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it." Thomas Jefferson http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.9A94 Rebellion "The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then." Thomas Jefferson Source: letter to Abigail Adams, February 22, 1787; reproduced in Thomas Jefferson, Writings (The Library of America, 1984), p. 889-890 "I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. Unsuccessful rebellions, indeed, generally establish the encroachments on the rights of the people which have produced them. An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions as not to discourage them too much. It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of the government." Thomas Jefferson Source:Letter to James Madison, Jan 30, 1787 "God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ... And what country can preserve its liberties, if it's rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure." Thomas Jefferson Source: November 13, 1787, letter to William S. Smith, quoted in Padover's Jefferson On Democracy "I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive. It places the governors indeed more at their ease at the expense of the people. The late rebellion in Massachusetts has given much more alarm than I think it should have done. Calculate that one rebellion in thirteen States in the course of eleven years is but one for each State in a century and a half. No country should be so long without one. Nor will any degree of power in the hands of the government prevent insurrections. In England, where the hand of power is heavier than with us, there are seldom half a dozen years without an insurrection. In France, where it is still heavier but less despotic, as Montesquieu supposes, than in some other countries and where there are always two or three hundred thousand men ready to crush insurrections, there have been three in the course of the three years I have been here, in every one of which greater numbers were engaged than in Massachusetts." -- Thomas Jefferson Source: Letter to James Madison, Paris, December 20, 1787. The Political Writings Of Thomas Jefferson 67-68 (Dumbauld Ed. 1955) http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.A496 Religon Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear. Do not be frightened from this inquiry from any fear of its consequences. If it ends in the belief that there is no God, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise... Thomas Jefferson Source: 1787 letter to his nephew The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts as are only injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. Thomas Jefferson Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry. Thomas Jefferson I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature. Thomas Jefferson In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to Liberty. Thomas Jefferson "The hocus-pocus phantasy of a God, like another Cerberus, with one body and three heads, had its birth and growth in the blood of thousands and thousands of martyrs." Thomas Jefferson Source:Jefferson s Works, Vol. IV, 360, Randolph's ed. "[The clergy] believe that any portion of power confided to me [as President] will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly: for I have sworn upon the altar of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. But this is all they have to fear from me: and enough, too, in their opinion." Thomas Jefferson Source:Letter to Benjamin Rush, 1800. "Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools and the other half hypocrites." Thomas Jefferson Source:Notes on the State of Virginia "Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must approve the homage of reason rather than of blind-folded fear. Do not be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of its consequences.... If it end in a belief that there is no god, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise and in the love of others it will procure for you." Thomas Jefferson Source:Letter to Peter Carr, 10 Aug. 1787. (original capitalization of "god" retained) "History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes." Thomas Jefferson Source:Letter to Alexander von Humboldt, 1813 Reputation No man will ever bring out of the Presidency the reputation which carries him into it. Thomas Jefferson Resistance "What country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms." Thomas Jefferson Source: in a letter to William S. Smith, 13 November 1787 http://liberty-tree.ca/qb/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.A0A7 Rights "It had become an universal and almost uncontroverted position in the several States, that the purposes of society do not require a surrender of all our rights to our ordinary governors; that there are certain portions of right not necessary to enable them to carry on an effective government, and which experience has nevertheless proved they will be constantly encroaching on, if submitted to them; that there are also certain fences which experience has proved peculiarly efficacious against wrong, and rarely obstructive of right, which yet the governing powers have ever shown a disposition to weaken and remove. Of the first kind, for instance, is freedom of religion; of the second, trial by jury, habeas corpus laws, free presses." Thomas Jefferson http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.58AA [Our] principles [are] founded on the immovable basis of equal right and reason. Thomas Jefferson Man [is] a rational animal, endowed by nature with rights and with an innate sense of justice. Thomas Jefferson A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate." Thomas Jefferson Nothing... is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man." Thomas Jefferson Sedition Law "I discharge every person under punishment or prosecution under the Sedition Law, because I considered, and now consider, that law to be a nullity as absolute and palpable as if Congress had ordered us to fall down and worship a golden image." Thomas Jefferson Source: Letter to Abigail Adams, 22 July 1804 Self-evident We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. Thomas Jefferson Service The greatest service which can be rendered any country is to add a useful plant to its culture. Thomas Jefferson Starvation I am for a government rigorously frugal and simple. Were we directed from Washington when to sow, when to reap, we should soon want bread. Thomas Jefferson
Super Majority "It would not be for the public good to have [a majority in Congress of one party] greater [than] two to one." Thomas Jefferson Supreme Court "You seem ... to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions; a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men, and not more so. They have, with others, the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps.... Their power [is] the more dangerous as they are in office for life, and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves." Thomas Jefferson US Founding Father, drafted the Declaration of Independence, 3rd US President Source: The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Letter to William Jarvis (September 28, 1820). Taxes To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical. Thomas Jefferson Source: Virginia Statutes of Religious Freedom, 1779 To lay taxes to provide for the general welfare of the United States, that is to say, 'to lay taxes for the purpose of providing for the general welfare.' For the laying of taxes is the power, and the general welfare the purpose for which the power is to be exercised. They are not to lay taxes ad libitum for any purpose they please; but only to pay the debts or provide for the welfare of the Union." Thomas Jefferson US Founding Father, drafted the Declaration of Independence, http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/ Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.B6C2 "We are all doubtless bound to contribute a certain portion of our income to the support of charitable and other useful public institutions. But it is a part of our duty also to apply our contributions in the most effectual way we can to secure this object. The question then is whether this will not be better done by each of us appropriating our whole contribution to the institutions within our reach, under our own eye, and over which we can exercise some useful control? Or would it be better that each should divide the sum he can spare among all the institutions of his State or the United States? Reason and the interest of these institutions themselves, certainly decide in favor of the former practice." -- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), US Founding Father, drafted the Declaration of Independence, 3rd US President http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.BF6C Trust "Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories." Thomas Jefferson Source:http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.80E3 Truth "And, finally, that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself; that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them." -- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), US Founding Father, drafted the Declaration of Independence, 3rd US President Source: The Virginia Act For Establishing Religious Freedom, 1786 http://religiousfreedom.lib.virginia.edu/sacred/vaact.html http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.A0A8 "The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors." Thomas Jefferson Source: Letter to John Novell, June 11, 1807 "Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories." Thomas Jefferson Source:http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Thomas.Jefferson.Quote.80E3 Vigilance The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Thomas Jefferson Unite Let us, then, fellow citizens, unite with one heart and one mind. Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things. And let us reflect that having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled, we have yet gained little if we counternance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of a bitter and bloody persecutions. Thomas Jefferson War Of 1812 "Bonaparte hates our government because it is a living libel on his, and the English hate us because they think our prosperity filched from theirs." Thomas Jefferson Source:James Madison, A Biography by Ralph Ketcham Zealot A single zealot may commence persecutor, and better men be his victims. Thomas Jefferson Source:Notes on the State of Virginia
