Thomas Jefferson - People Quotes

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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
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
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
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
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 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
For St. Paul only says that it is better to be married than to burn. Now I presume that if that apostle had known that providence would at an after day be so kind to any particular set of people as to furnish them with other means of extinguishing their fire than those of matrimony, he would have earnestly recmmended them to their practice.

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 wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.

Thomas Jefferson
It should be remembered, as an axiom of eternal truth in politics, that whatever power in any government is independent, is absolute also; in theory only, at first, while the spirit of the people is up, but in practice, as fast as that relaxes. Independence can be trusted nowhere but with the people in mass. They are inherently independent of all but moral law.

Thomas Jefferson
You have lived longer than I have and perhaps may have formed a different judgment on better grounds; but my observations do not enable me to say I think integrity the characteristic of wealth. In general I believe the decisions of the people, in a body, will be more honest and more disinterested than those of wealthy men.

Thomas Jefferson
Choice by the people themselves is not generally distinguished for its wisdom.

Thomas Jefferson
The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object.

Thomas Jefferson
He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

Thomas Jefferson
The interests of the States... ought to be made joint in every possible instance in order to cultivate the idea of our being one nation, and to multiply the instances in which the people shall look up to Congress as their head.

Thomas Jefferson
When our king goes out they [French people] fall down and kiss the earth…. Then they go to kissing one another. This is the truest wisdon. They have as much happiness in one year as one Englishman in ten.

Thomas Jefferson
The Greeks by their laws, and the Romans by the spirit of their people, took care to put into the hands of their rulers no such engine of oppression as a standing army. Their system was to make every man a soldier, and oblige him to repair to the standard of his country whenever that was reared. This made them invincible; and the same remedy will make us so.

Thomas Jefferson
A prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a people who mean to be free.

Thomas Jefferson
Having seen the people of all other nations bowed down to the earth under the wars and prodigalities of their rulers, I have cherished their opposites, peace, economy, and riddance of public debt, believing that these were the high road to public as well as private prosperity and happiness.

Thomas Jefferson
Above all things I hope the education of the common people will be attended to; convinced that on their good sense we may rely with most security for the preservation of a due degree of liberty.

Thomas Jefferson
Industry, commerce and security are the surest roads to the happiness and prosperity of people.

Thomas Jefferson
Let our countrymen know that the people alone can protect us against these evils of misgovernment.

Thomas Jefferson
For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well organized and armed militia is their best security.

Thomas Jefferson
From the nature of things, every society must at all times possess within itself the sovereign powers of legislation. The feelings of human nature revolt against the supposition of a state so situated as that it may not in any emergency provide against dangers which perhaps threaten immediate ruin. While those bodies are in existence to whom the people have delegated the powers of legislation, they alone possess and may exercise those powers; but when they are dissolved by the lopping off one or more of their branches, the power reverts to the people, who may exercise it to unlimited extent, either assembling together in person, sending deputies, or in any other way they may think proper.

Thomas Jefferson
What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.

Thomas Jefferson
Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate, than that these people are to be free; nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion have drawn indelible lines of distinction between them.

Thomas Jefferson