2,194 Quotes by Thomas Jefferson

The judiciary of the United States is the subtle corps of sappers and miners constantly working under ground to undermine the foundations of our confederated fabric. They are construing our constitution from a co-ordination of a general and special government to a general and supreme one alone.

Each generation has a right to choose for itself the form of government it believes most promotive of its happiness.

I know of no safe depository of the ultimate power of the society but the people themselves.

The remaining revenue on the consumption of foreign luxuries to domestic comforts, being collected on our seaboard and frontiers only, and incorporated with the transactions of our mercantile citizens, it may be the pleasure and the pride of an American to ask, What farmer, what merchant, what laborer ever sees a tax gatherer of the United States?

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.

It is too late in the day for men of sincerity to pretend they believe in the Platonic mysticisms that three are one, and one is three; and yet that the one is not three, and the three are not one.

The good sense of the people will always be found to be the best army

I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master.

I don't want them to kill no hog . . . . I want a man to go to that chair, on his own two feet.