Top 100 Thomas Jefferson Liberty Quotes
#1. Defend our liberties and fashion into one united people the multitudes brought hither out of many kindred and tongues.
Thomas Jefferson
#2. It's only merit was in being the first publication which carried the claim of our rights their whole length, and asserted that there was no rightful link of connection between us and England but that of being under the same king.
Thomas Jefferson
#3. Never buy what you do not want, because it is cheap; it will be dear to you.
Thomas Jefferson
#4. Postpone to the great object of Liberty every smaller motive and passion.
Thomas Jefferson
#5. We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed.
Thomas Jefferson
#6. Free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence; it is jealousy, and not confidence, which prescribes limited constitutions, to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power.
Thomas Jefferson
#7. Not for ourselves alone, but for all humanity ... Let us hasten to find the path that leads to liberty, safety, and peace for everyone.
Thomas Jefferson
#8. And even should the cloud of barbarism and despotism again obscure the science and libraries of Europe, this country remains to preserve and restore light and liberty to them.
Thomas Jefferson
#9. It is easily and often overlooked that when Thomas Jefferson asserted that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness were inalienable human rights, he did so on the ground that they had been endowed by God, our Creator.
Tom Stoppard
#10. I am entirely persuaded that the agitations of the public mind advance its powers, and that at every vibration between the points of liberty and despotism, something will be gained for the former. As men become better informed, their rulers must respect them the more.
Thomas Jefferson
#11. Our legislators are not sufficiently apprized of the rightful limits of their power; that their true office is to declare and enforce only our natural rights and duties, and to take none of them from us.
Thomas Jefferson
#12. The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases.
Thomas Jefferson
#14. The Tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrant. It is its natural manure.
Thomas Jefferson
#15. Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of the day; but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers (adminstrators) too plainly proves a deliberate, systematic plan of reducing us to slavery.
Thomas Jefferson
#16. Being myself a warm zealot for the attainment & enjoiment by all mankind of as much liberty as each may exercise without injury to the equal liberty of his fellow citizens, I have lamented that in France the endeavors to obtain this should have been attended with the effusion of so much blood.
Thomas Jefferson
#17. In a government bottomed on the will of all, the ... liberty of every individual citizen becomes interesting to all.
Thomas Jefferson
#18. All persons shall have full and free liberty of religious opinion; nor shall any be compelled to frequent or maintain any religious institution.
Thomas Jefferson
#19. [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
#20. Liberty is the great parent of science and of virtue; and a nation will be great in both in proportion as it is free.
Thomas Jefferson
#21. I think all the world would gain by setting commerce at perfect liberty.
Thomas Jefferson
#22. Under the law of nature, all men are born free, every one comes into the world with a right to his own person, which includes the liberty of moving and using it at his own will. This is what is called personal liberty, and is given him by the Author
Thomas Jefferson
#24. 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
#28. Against us are all timid men who prefer the calm of despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty We are likely to preserve the liberty we have obtained only by unremitting labors and perils.
Thomas Jefferson
#29. The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground.
Thomas Jefferson
#30. The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy but cannot disjoin them.
Thomas Jefferson
#31. Were we directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we should soon want bread.
Thomas Jefferson
#32. A single good government is a blessing to the whole earth.
Thomas Jefferson
#33. If ever there was a holy war, it was that which saved our liberties and gave us independence.
Thomas Jefferson
#34. Instead of that liberty which takes root and growth in the progress of reason, if recovered by mere force or accident, it becomes with an unprepared people a tyranny still of the many, the few, or the one.
Thomas Jefferson
#35. In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.
Thomas Jefferson
#36. I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.
Thomas Jefferson
#37. The liberty of speaking and writing guards our other liberties.
Thomas Jefferson
#38. He [Weishaupt] says, no one ever laid a surer foundation for liberty than our grand master, Jesus of Nazareth.
Thomas Jefferson
#39. 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
#40. An elective despotism was not the government we fought for.
Thomas Jefferson
#41. Our attachment to no nation on earth should supplant our attachment to liberty.
Thomas Jefferson
#42. I sincerely pray that all the members of the human family may, in the time prescribed by the Father of us all, find themselves securely established in the enjoyment of life, liberty, and happiness.
Thomas Jefferson
#43. An individual, thinking himself injured, makes more noise than a State.
Thomas Jefferson
#45. This ball of liberty, I believe most piously, is now so well in motion that it will roll round the globe. at least the enlightened part of it, for light & liberty go together.
Thomas Jefferson
#46. Trial by jury is part of the bright constellation which leads to peace, liberty and safety.
Thomas Jefferson
#47. 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 ...
Thomas Jefferson
#48. No man complains of his neighbor for ill management of his affairs, for an error in sowing his land, or marrying his daughter, for consuming his substance in taverns ... in all these he has liberty; but if he does not frequent the church, or then conform in ceremonies, there is an immediate uproar.
Thomas Jefferson
#49. All authority belongs to the people ... In questions of power let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief with chains of the Constitution.
Thomas Jefferson
#50. How I longed to see these things; how I longed to see the Liberty Bell and walk on the streets where Thomas Jefferson, Tom Paine and Benjamin Franklin had walked.
Burl Ives
#51. God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever." (Thomas Jefferson)
John Price
#52. I may err in my measures, but never shall deflect from the intention to fortify the public liberty by every possible means, and to put it out of the power of the few to riot on the labors of the many.
Thomas Jefferson
#53. The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty and property of their constituents.
Thomas Jefferson
#55. To history therefore I must refer for answer, in which it would be an unhappy passage indeed, which should shew by what fatal indulgence of subordinate views and passions, a contest for an atom had defeated well founded prospects of giving liberty to half the globe.
Thomas Jefferson
#56. Where a new invention promises to be useful, it ought to be tried.
Thomas Jefferson
#57. I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.
Thomas Jefferson
#58. Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.
Thomas Jefferson
#59. The moral sense is as much a part of our constitution as that of feeling, seeing, or hearing.
Thomas Jefferson
#60. The Christian religion, when divested of the rags in which they [the clergy] have enveloped it, and brought to the original purity and simplicity of it's benevolent institutor, is a religion of all others most friendly to liberty, science, and the freest expansion of the human mind.
Thomas Jefferson
#61. Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous, and they are tied to their country and wedded to its liberty and interests by the most lasting bonds.
Thomas Jefferson
#62. The mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.
Thomas Jefferson
#63. No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free no one ever will.
Thomas Jefferson
#64. Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.
Thomas Jefferson
#65. 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
#66. Considering the great importance to the public liberty of the freedom of the press, and the difficulty of submitting it to very precise rules, the laws have thought it less mischievous to give greater scope to its freedom than to the restraint of it.
Thomas Jefferson
#67. I will not believe our labors are lost. I shall not die without a hope that light and liberty are on a steady advance.
Thomas Jefferson
#68. In every country and every age, the priest had been hostile to Liberty.
Thomas Jefferson
#69. It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.
Thomas Jefferson
#70. A nation which expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, expects that which never was and never will be.
Thomas Jefferson
#71. The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to.
Thomas Jefferson
#72. I sincerely believe the banking institutions having the issuing power of money, are more dangerous to liberty than standing armies.
Thomas Jefferson
#73. The ground of liberty is to be gained by inches. We must be contented to secure what we can get from time to time and eternally press forward for what is yet to get. It takes time to persuade men to do even what is for their own good.
Thomas Jefferson
#74. Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of Liberty.
Thomas Jefferson
#75. 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
#76. Life in cyberspace seems to be shaping up exactly like Thomas Jefferson would have wanted: founded on the primacy of individual liberty and a commitment to pluralism, diversity, and community.
Mitch Kapor
#77. In our early struggles for liberty, religious freedom could not fail to become a primary object.
Thomas Jefferson
#78. The liberty of the whole earth was depending on the issue of the contest, and was ever such a prize won with so little innocent blood?
Thomas Jefferson
#79. Agriculture, manufactures, commerce, and navigation, the four pillars of our prosperity, are the most thriving when left most free to individual enterprise.
Thomas Jefferson
#80. 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
#81. From the dissensions among Sects themselves arise necessarily a right of choosing and necessity of deliberating to which we will conform. But if we choose for ourselves, we must allow others to choose also, and so reciprocally, this establishes religious liberty.
Thomas Jefferson
#82. Whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force.
Thomas Jefferson
#83. Now I will avow, that I then believed and now believe that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God; and that those principles of liberty are as unalterable as human nature and our terrestrial, mundane system.
Thomas Jefferson
#84. When the people fear the government there is tyranny, when the government fears the people there is liberty.
Thomas Jefferson
#85. 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
#86. 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
#87. Thomas Jefferson said, The tree of liberty must be fertilized from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. Yeah and I heard that and thought, I'm out!
Christopher Titus
#88. Trade liberty for safety or money and you'll end up with neither. Liberty, like a grain of salt, easily dissolves. The power of questioning - not simply believing - has no friends. Yet liberty depends on it.
Thomas Jefferson
#89. I tolerate with the utmost latitude the right of others to differ from me in opinion without imputing to them criminality.
Thomas Jefferson
#90. How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy!
Thomas Jefferson
#91. At noon, on the Fourth of July, 1826, while the Liberty Bell was again sounding its old message to the people of Philadelphia, the soul of Thomas Jefferson passed on; and a few hours later John Adams entered into rest, with the name of his old friend upon his lips.
Allen Johnson
#92. A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both, and deserve neither.
Thomas Jefferson
#93. But of all the views of this law [universal education] none is more important, none more legitimate, than that of rendering the people the safe, as they are the ultimate, guardians of their own liberty.
Thomas Jefferson
#94. Lethargy is the forerunner of death to the public liberty.
Thomas Jefferson
#95. 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
#96. Thomas Jefferson High
School [..] His high school was named after a slave owner who was also one of
the world's greatest theoreticians on the subject of human liberty.
Kurt Vonnegut
#97. I had always hoped that the younger generation receiving their early impressions after the flame of liberty had been kindled in every breast ... would have sympathized with oppression wherever found, and proved their love of liberty beyond their own share of it.
Thomas Jefferson
#98. 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
#99. Convinced that the people are the only safe depositories of their own liberty, and that they are not safe unless enlightened to a certain degree, I have looked on our present state of liberty as a short-lived possession unless the mass of the people could be informed to a certain degree.
Thomas Jefferson
#100. Nothing is more likely than that [the] enumeration of powers is defective. This is the ordinary case of all human works. Let us then go on perfecting it by adding by way of amendment to the Constitution those powers which time and trial show are still wanting
Thomas Jefferson
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