Top 100 Government Jefferson Quotes
#1. Questioning our government's actions does not violate the principles of liberty, equality, and freedom of speech; it exercises them, and by exercise we grow stronger. I have read enough of Thomas Jefferson to feel sure
Barbara Kingsolver
#2. Responsibility is a tremendous engine in a free government.
Thomas Jefferson
#3. Whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force.
Thomas Jefferson
#4. The equal rights of man, and the happiness of every individual, are now acknowledged to be the only legitimate objects of government.
Thomas Jefferson
#5. That government is the strongest of which every man feels himself a part.
Thomas Jefferson
#6. Jefferson repeatedly said that the best government was the smallest government, that governments are not the masters of the people, but the servants of the people governed.
Ronald Reagan
#7. When the people fear the government there is tyranny, when the government fears the people there is liberty.
Thomas Jefferson
#8. The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest.
Thomas Jefferson
#9. Religion, morality, and knowledge are necessary for good government ... Therefore schools and the means of educating the people should always be encouraged.
Thomas Jefferson
#10. Jefferson's Declaration of Independence is a practical document for the use of practical men. It is not a thesis for philosophers, but a whip for tyrants; it is not a theory of government but a program of action.
Woodrow Wilson
#11. Certainly, no power to prescribe any religious exercise, or to assume authority in religious discipline, has been delegated to the General Government.
Thomas Jefferson
#12. Legislators invent too many devices for subdividing property, only taking care to let their subdivisions go hand in hand with the natural affections of the human mind.
Thomas Jefferson
#13. If ever this vast country is brought under a single government, it will be one of the most extensive corruption.
Thomas Jefferson
#14. Racial rhetoric has been entwined with government from the start, all the way back to when the enemy was not Obamacare but the Grand Army of the Republic (and further in the past than that: Thomas Jefferson, after all, was derided as 'the Negro President').
Rick Perlstein
#15. An occasional insurrection will not weigh against the inconveniences of a government of force, such as are monarchies and aristocracies.
Thomas Jefferson
#16. The people are the ultimate guardians of their own liberties. In every government on earth is some trace of human weakness, some germ of corruption and degeneracy ... Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone.
Thomas Jefferson
#17. Unless the mass retains sufficient control over those entrusted with the powers of their government, these will be perverted to their own oppression, and to the perpetuation of wealth and power in the individuals and their families selected for the trust.
Thomas Jefferson
#18. The further the departure from direct and constant control by the citizens, the less has the government of the ingredient of republicanism ...
Thomas Jefferson
#19. History, in general, only informs us what bad government is.
Thomas Jefferson
#20. It is reasonable that everyone who asks justice should do justice
Thomas Jefferson
#21. Resolved ... that it would be a dangerous delusion were a confidence in the men of our choice to silence our fears for the safety of our rights: that confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism - free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence;
Thomas Jefferson
#22. May it be to the world ... to assume the blessings and security of self-government.
Thomas Jefferson
#23. The provisions we have made [for our government] are such as please ourselves; they answer the substantial purposes of government and of justice, and other purposes than these should not be answered.
Thomas Jefferson
#24. If virtuous, the government need not fear the fair operation of attack and defense. Nature has given to man no other means of sifting the truth, either in religion, law, or politics.
Thomas Jefferson
#25. There is ... an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents ... The artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient in government, and provision should be made to prevent its ascendency.
Thomas Jefferson
#26. We are now vibrating between too much and too little government, and the pendulum will rest finally in the middle.
Thomas Jefferson
#27. I consider the government of the U.S. as interdicted by the Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions, their doctrines, discipline, or exercises.
Thomas Jefferson
#28. [We should be] determined ... to sever ourselves from the union we so much value rather than give up the rights of self-government ... in which alone we see liberty, safety and happiness.
Thomas Jefferson
#29. It should be remembered, as an axiom of eternal truth in politics, that whatever power in any government is independent, is absolute also.
Thomas Jefferson
#30. If I had to choose between government without newspapers, and newspapers without government, I wouldn't hesitate to choose the latter
Thomas Jefferson
#31. It will be said that great societies cannot exist without government.
Thomas Jefferson
#32. I believe the states can best govern our home concerns and the federal government our foreign ones.
Thomas Jefferson
#33. The qualifications for self-government in society are not innate. they are the result of habit and long training.
Thomas Jefferson
#34. Stock dealers and banking companies, by the aid of a paper system, are enriching themselves to the ruin of our country, and swaying the government by their possession of the printing presses, which their wealth commands and by any other means, not always honorable to the character of our countrymen.
Thomas Jefferson
#35. The First Amendment has created a wall of separation between the church and the State. But that wall is one directional. It is to keep the government from running the Church. But it is not to keep Christian principles out of the government.
Thomas Jefferson
#36. Mr. Jefferson has reason to reflect upon himself. How he will get rid of his remorse in his retirement, I know not. He must know that he leaves the government infinitely worse than he found it, and that from his own error or ignorance.
John Adams
#37. If we can but prevent the government from wasting the labours of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy.
Thomas Jefferson
#38. The end of democracy and the defeat of the American Revolution will occur when government falls into the hands of lending institutions and moneyed incorporations.
Thomas Jefferson
#39. I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government; I mean an additional article taking from the Federal Government the power of borrowing.
Thomas Jefferson
#40. The main objects of all science, the freedom and happiness of man ... [are] the sole objects of all legitimate government.
(A plaque with this quotation, with the first phrase omitted, is in the stairwell of the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty.)
Thomas Jefferson
#41. Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto.
Thomas Jefferson
#42. To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude.
Thomas Jefferson
#43. ONLY a government that is AFRAID of its citizens tries to control them.
Thomas Jefferson
#44. The war ... must go on till the last man of this generation falls in his tracks ... unless you acknowledge our right to self-government. We are not fighting for slavery. We are fighting for Independence,and that, or extermination, we WILL have.
Jefferson Davis
#45. Among the most inestimable of our blessings is that ... of liberty to worship our Creator in the way we think most agreeable to His will; a liberty deemed in other countries incompatible with good government and yet proved by our experience to be its best support.
Thomas Jefferson
#46. There has been no organized effort to keep government down since Jefferson's day. Ever since then the American people have been bolstering up its powers and giving it more and more jurisdiction over their affairs. They pay for that folly in increased taxes and diminished liberties.
H.L. Mencken
#47. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. 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
#48. [The people] are in truth the only legitimate proprietors of the soil and government.
Thomas Jefferson
#49. 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.
Thomas Jefferson
#51. I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.
Thomas Jefferson
#52. The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind.
Thomas Jefferson
#53. No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free no one ever will.
Thomas Jefferson
#54. We exist, and are quoted, as standing proofs that a government, so modeled as to rest continually on the will of the whole society, is a practicable government.
Thomas Jefferson
#55. No government should be without critics. If its intentions are good then it has nothing to fear from criticism.
Thomas Jefferson
#56. The founding fathers went out of their way to establish a clear "wall of separation" between religion and state, to quote Thomas Jefferson. They reasoned, as James Madison so cleverly articulated, that both religion and government exist in greater purity if kept apart.
Phil Zuckerman
#57. Each generation has a right to choose for itself the form of government it believes most promotive of its happiness.
Thomas Jefferson
#58. I consider ethics, as well as religion, as supplements to law in the government of man.
Thomas Jefferson
#59. The purpose of government is to enable the people of a nation to live in safety and happiness. Government exists for the interests of the governed, not for the governors.
Thomas Jefferson
#60. The only orthodox object of the institution of government is to secure the greatest degree of happiness possible to the general mass of those associated under it.
Thomas Jefferson
#61. With all the imperfections of our present government, it is without comparison the best existing, or that ever did exist.
Thomas Jefferson
#62. The executive, in our government is not the sole, it is scarcely the principle, object of my jealousy. The tyranny of the legislature is the most formidable dread at present and will be for many years. That of the executive will come in its turn, but it will be at a remote period.
Thomas Jefferson
#63. 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 has drawn indelible lines of distinction between them.
Thomas Jefferson
#64. Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government.
Thomas Jefferson
#65. The foundation on which (our government is) built is the natural equality of man, the denial of every pre-eminence but that annexed to legal office, and particularly the denial of a pre-eminence by birth.
Thomas Jefferson
#66. The right of self-government does not comprehend the government of others.
Thomas Jefferson
#67. To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.
Thomas Jefferson
#68. [T]he States can best govern our home concerns and the general government our foreign ones. I wish, therefore ... never to see all offices transferred to Washington, where, further withdrawn from the eyes of the people, they may more secretly be bought and sold at market.
Thomas Jefferson
#69. Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends [life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness] it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government ...
Thomas Jefferson
#70. Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.
Thomas Jefferson
#71. It is not by the consolidation or concentration of powers but by their distribution that good government is effected.
Thomas Jefferson
#72. Government as well as religion has furnished its schisms, its persecutions and its devices for fattening idleness on the earnings of the people.
Thomas Jefferson
#73. What I'm thinking about more and more these days is simply the importance of transparency, and Jefferson's saying that he'd rather have a free press without a government than a government without a free press.
Esther Dyson
#74. The government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers.
Thomas Jefferson
#75. An hereditary aristocracy ... will change the form of our governments from the best to the worst in the world.
Thomas Jefferson
#76. Those who bear equally the burthens of Government should equally participate of its benefits.
Thomas Jefferson
#77. This I hope will be the age of experiments in government, and that their basis will be founded in principles of honesty, not of mere force.
Thomas Jefferson
#78. When the people are afraid of the government, that's tyranny. But when the government is afraid of the people, that's liberty.
Thomas Jefferson
#79. 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
#80. History, in general, only informs us of what bad government is.
Thomas Jefferson
#81. What has destroyed liberty and the rights of man in every government which has ever existed under the sun? The generalizing and concentrating all cares and power into one body, no matter whether of the autocrats of Russia or France, or of the aristocrats of a Venetian senate.
Thomas Jefferson
#82. [It is a] happy truth that man is capable of self-government, and only rendered otherwise by the moral degradation designedly superinduced on him by the wicked acts of his tyrant.
Thomas Jefferson
#83. I think our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries; as long as they are chiefly agricultural.
Thomas Jefferson
#84. It is a problem, not clear in my mind, that [a society without government, as among our Indians] is not the best. But I believe it to be inconsistent with any great degree of population.
Thomas Jefferson
#85. The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty and property of their constituents.
Thomas Jefferson
#86. The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object.
Thomas Jefferson
#87. What an augmentation of the field for jobbing, speculating, plundering, office-building and office-hunting would be produced by an assumption of all the state powers into the hands of the general government.
Thomas Jefferson
#88. We need a revolution every 20 years just to keep government honest.
Thomas Jefferson
#89. With all the defects in our Constitution, whether general or particular, the comparison of our government with those of Europe, is like a comparison of Heaven with Hell. England, like the earth, may be allowed to take the intermediate station.
Thomas Jefferson
#90. Government can do something for the people only in proportion as it can do something to the people.
Thomas Jefferson
#91. To draw around the whole nation the strength of the General Government
as a barrier against foreign foes ... is [one of the] functions of the General Government on which [our citizens] have a right to call.
Thomas Jefferson
#92. The cement of this union is in the heart blood of every American. I do not believe there is on earth a government established on so immovable a basis.
Thomas Jefferson
#93. The States should be urged to concede to the General Government, with a saving of chartered rights, the exclusive power of establishing banks of discount for paper.
Thomas Jefferson
#94. The mobs of great cities add just so much to the support of pure government as sores do to the strength of the human body.
Thomas Jefferson
#95. In every government on earth is some trace of human weakness, some germ of corruption and degeneracy, which cunning will discover, and wickedness insensibly open, cultivate and improve.
Thomas Jefferson
#96. I deem no government safe which is under the vassalage of any self-constituted authorities, or any other authority than that of the nation, or its regular functionaries.
Thomas Jefferson
#97. A quote from the American Thomas Jefferson. A government big enough to give you everything you want is strong enough to take everything you have.
Steve Berry
#98. The opinions of men should not be the object of any government. Our civil rights are no more dependent on our religious beliefs than they are dependent upon our thoughts about geometry or physics!
Thomas Jefferson
#99. The excellence of every government is its adaptation to the state of those to be governed by it.
Thomas Jefferson
#100. Tyranny is defined as that which is legal for the government but illegal for the citizenry.
Thomas Jefferson
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