2,194 Quotes by Thomas Jefferson

We lay it down as a fundamental, that laws, to be just, must give a reciprocation of right; that, without this, they are mere arbitrary rules of conduct, founded in force, and not in conscience.

Preachers dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight.

Debt and revolution are inseparable as cause and effect.

Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.

The good opinion of mankind, like the lever of Archimedes, with the given fulcrum, moves the world.

They are nations of eternal war. All their energies are expended in the destruction of the labor, property, and lives of their people.

A little rebellion now and then is a good thing. Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God. In order to flourish, the tree of Liberty needs the blood of patriots and tyrants.

We may say with truth and meaning, that governments are more or less republican, as they have more or less of the element of popular election and control in their composition; and believing as I do, that the mass of the citizens is the safest depository of their own rights and especially that the evils flowing from the duperies of the people are less injurious than those from the egoism of their agents, I am a friend to that composition of government which has in it the most of this ingredient.

The second office in the government is honorable and easy; the first is but a splendid misery.