Thomas Jefferson - People Quotes

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A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.

Thomas Jefferson
I know nothing more important to inculcate into the minds of young people than the wisdom, the honor, and the blessed comfort of living within their income.

Thomas Jefferson
The information of the people at large can alone make them the safe as they are the sole depositary of our political and religious freedom.

Thomas Jefferson
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.

Thomas Jefferson
Let those flatter who fear; it is not an American art. To give praise which is not due might be well from the venal, but would ill beseem those who are asserting the rights of human nature. They know, and will therefore say, that kings are the servants, not the proprietors of the people.

Thomas Jefferson
I think by far the most important bill in our whole code is that for the diffusion of knowlege among the people. no other sure foundation can be devised for the preservation of freedom, and happiness.

Thomas Jefferson
Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever He had a chosen people, whose breasts He has made His peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue.

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. The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty and property of their constituents. There is no safe deposit for these but with the people themselves; nor can they be safe with them without information. Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe.

Thomas Jefferson
The parties of Whig and Tory are those of nature. They exist in all countries, whether called by these names or by those of Aristocrats and Democrats, Cote Droite and Cote Gauche, Ultras and Radicals, Serviles and Liberals. The sickly, weakly, timid man fears the people, and is a Tory by nature. The healthy, strong and bold cherishes them, and is formed a Whig by nature.

Thomas Jefferson
It is an axiom in my mind, that our liberty can never be safe but in the hands of the people themselves, and that too of the people with a certain degree of instruction. This it is the business of the State to effect, and on a general plan.

Thomas Jefferson
Should things go wrong at any time, the people will set them to rights by the peaceable exercise of their elective rights.

Thomas Jefferson
The tumults in America I expected would have produced in Europe an unfavorable opinion of our political state. But it has not. On the contrary, the small effect of these tumults seems to have given more confidence in the firmness of our governments. The interposition of the people themselves on the side of government has had a great effect on the opinion here in Europe.

Thomas Jefferson
It is Mortifying to suppose it possible that a people able and zealous to contend with the Enemy should be reduced to fold their Arms for want of the means of defence; yet no resources that we know of, ensure us against this event.

Thomas Jefferson
Only lay down true principles, and adhere to them inflexibly. Do not be frightened into their surrender by the alarms of the timid, or the croakings of wealth against the ascendency of the people.

Thomas Jefferson
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.

Thomas Jefferson
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.

Thomas Jefferson
Every people may establish what form of government they please, and change it as they please, the will of the nation being the only thing essential.

Thomas Jefferson
In a warm climate, no man will labour for himself who can make another labour for him. This is so true, that of the proprietors of slaves a very small proportion indeed are ever seen to labour. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of 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 for ever: that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events: that it may become probable by supernatural interference!

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 a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them.

Thomas Jefferson
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.

Thomas Jefferson
My God! How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy!

Thomas Jefferson
It has been thought that the people are not competent electors of judges learned in the law. But I do not know this to be true, and, if doubtful, we should follow principle.

Thomas Jefferson
The mother principle [is] that 'governments are republican only in proportion as they embody the will of their people, and execute it.'.

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
The spirit of 1776 is not dead. It has only been slumbering. The body of the American people is substantially republican. But their virtuous feelings have been played on by some fact with more fiction; they have been the dupes of artful maneuvers, and made for a moment to be willing instruments in forging chains for themselves. But times and truth dissipated the delusion, and opened their eyes.

Thomas Jefferson
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?

Thomas Jefferson
The purse of the people is the real seat of sensibility. Let it be drawn upon largely, and they will then listen to truths which could not excite them through any other organ.

Thomas Jefferson
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.

Thomas Jefferson
What is wanting to restore us to our station among our confederates? not more money from the people. enough has been raised by them, and appropriated to this very object. it is that it should be employed understandingly, and for their greatest good. that good requires that, while they are...

Thomas Jefferson
No man has greater confidence than I have in the spirit of the people, to a rational extent. Whatever they can, they will.

Thomas Jefferson