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Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson Quotes

3rd U.S. President

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Famous Thomas Jefferson Quotes

“What country before ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to 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.”

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Author:Thomas Jefferson
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“The mobs of the great cities add just so much to the support of pure government as sores do to the strength of the human body. It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution.”

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Book:The Essential Jefferson
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“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.”

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Author:Thomas Jefferson
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“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 its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.”

PeopleIfsWellsCountryFactsSpiritFreedomLibertyArmsQuietImportanceResistancePreservesProportionPatriotismRulersMisconceptionRight To Bear ArmsLethargyForerunnersLiberty Tree
Book:Memoirs, 2: Correspondence and Private Papers
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“When the representative body have lost the confidence of their constituents, when they have notoriously made sale of their most valuable rights, when they have assumed to themselves powers which the people never put into their hands, then indeed their continuing in office becomes dangerous to the state”

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Book:The writings of Thomas Jefferson: being his autobiography, correspondence, reports, messages, addresses, and other writings, official and private
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“No government can continue good but under the control of the people; and . . . . their minds are to be informed by education what is right and what wrong; to be encouraged in habits of virtue and to be deterred from those of vice . . . . These are the inculcations necessary to render the people a sure basis for the structure and order of government.”

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Book:The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence, cont
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“He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it’s most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the christian king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce...”

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Author:Thomas Jefferson
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“The basis of our governments 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 a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them.”

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Book:Memoir, correspondence, and miscellanies from the papers of T. Jefferson
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“The most effectual means of preventing the perversion of power into tyranny are to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large, and more especially to give them knowledge of those facts which history exhibits, that possessed thereby of the experience of other ages and countries, they may be enabled to know ambition under all its shapes, and prompt to exert their natural powers to defeat its purposes.”

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Book:The Real Thomas Jefferson
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“I sincerely wish you may find it convenient to come here. the pleasure of the trip will be less than you expect, but the utility greater. it will make you adore your own country, it's soil, it's climate, it's equality, liberty, laws, people & manners. my god! how little do my countrymen know.”

PeopleKnowsMayLittlesCountryLawWishPleasureLibertyGreaterClimateMannersSoilAdoreSincerelyUtilityConvenientWish YouCountrymenAdore You
Book:The Works of Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia II, Correspondence 1782-1786
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“To constrain the brute force of the people, the European governments deem it necessary to keep them down by hard labor, poverty and ignorance, and to take from them, as from bees, so much of their earnings, as that unremitting labor shall be necessary to obtain a sufficient surplus to sustain a scanty and miserable life.”

PeopleHardGovernmentPoliticsForcePovertyIgnoranceLaborMiserableSufficientBeesEarningBrutesSurplusBrute ForceConstrainMiserable Life
Book:Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies: From the Papers of Thomas Jefferson
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“A noiseless course, not meddling with the affairs of others, unattractive of notice, is a mark that society is going on in happiness. If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them, they must become happy.”

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Book:The writings of Thomas Jefferson: being his autobiography, correspondence, reports, messages, addresses, and other writings, official and private
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“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.”

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Book:The writings of Thomas Jefferson
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“When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands 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.”

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Author:Thomas Jefferson
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“We established however some, although not all its [self-government] important principles . The constitutions of most of our States assert, that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves, in all cases to which they think themselves competent, (as in electing their functionaries executive and legislative, and deciding by a jury of themselves, in all judiciary cases in which any fact is involved,) or they may act by representatives, freely and equally chosen; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed.”

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Book:Jefferson: Political Writings
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“In America, no other distinction between man and man had ever been known but that of persons in office exercising powers by authority of the laws, and private individuals. Among these last, the poorest laborer stood on equal ground with the wealthiest millionaire, and generally on a more favored one whenever their rights seem to jar.”

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Book:Light and Liberty: Reflections on the Pursuit of Happiness
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“The Constitution on which our Union rests, shall be administered by me [as President] according to the safe and honest meaning contemplated by the plain understanding of the people of the United States at the time of its adoption - a meaning to be found in the explanations of those who advocated, not those who opposed it, and who opposed it merely lest the construction should be applied which they denounced as possible.”

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Author:Thomas Jefferson
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“If, then, the control of the people over the organs of their government be the measure of its republicanism, and I confess I know no other measure, it must be agreed that our governments have much less of republicanism than ought to have been expected; in other words, that the people have less regular control over their agents, than their rights and their interests require.”

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Book:Memoir, correspondence, and miscellanies from the papers of T. Jefferson
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“I hold it that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms are 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 medicine necessary for the sound health of government.”

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Author:Thomas Jefferson
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“I have often thought that nothing would do more extensive good at small expense than the establishment of a small circulating library in every county, to consist of a few well-chosen books, to be lent to the people of the country under regulations as would secure their safe return in due time.”

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Book:Jefferson: Writings
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“The constitutions of most of our States assert, that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves, in all cases to which they think themselves competent, or they may act by representatives, freely and equally chosen; 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.”

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Author:Thomas Jefferson
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“All power is inherent in the people.”

PeopleArmsGunConstitutionAmendmentsInherentGun ControlFederal GovernmentFoundingFreedom And LibertySelf DefenseSecond AmendmentFreedom LibertyFirearmsFreedom Of The PressRight To Bear ArmsBearing ArmsGun RightsSelf-governmentRights And FreedomsPro GunFounding Fathers Gun2 AmendmentFounding Fathers Second AmendmentFramersAmendment 1Strong ArmsAmendment 19Amendment 4Power GovernmentGuns In America
Book:Memoirs, 4: Correspondence and Private Papers
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“The people, especially when moderately instructed, are the only safe, because the only honest, depositaries of the public rights, and should therefore be introduced into the administration of them in every function to which they are sufficient; they will err sometimes and accidentally, but never designedly, and with a systematic and persevering purpose of overthrowing the free principles of the government.”

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Book:The writings of Thomas Jefferson
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