Quotes fromThomas Jefferson

Appropriate for the Current Political Climate

“Never spend your money before you have earned it.”

“No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free no one ever will.”

“Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without government, I should not

hesitate a moment to prefer the latter”

“Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.”

“All authority belongs to the people”

“It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.”

“If 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.”

“Do not bite at the bait of pleasure, till you know there is no hook beneath it.”

“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.”

“Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong

as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.”

“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.”

“I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.”

“He who knows best knows how little he knows”

“Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.”

“Leave no authority existing not responsible to the people.”

“I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.”

“Were we directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we should soon want bread.”

“If government have a right of demanding ad libitum (without advance

preparation) and of taxing us themselves to the full amount of their demand if we do not comply with it, this would leave us without anything we can

call property”

“The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.”

“To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.”

 “I, however, place economy among the first and most important republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be

feared.”

“All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.”

“I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principles of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of

funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale”

“My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.”

“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.”

“My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.”

“We must do our duty and convince the world that we are just friends and brave enemies”

“The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government”

“If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty

lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour?”

“A bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular, and what no just

government should refuse, or rest on inferences”