Thomas Jefferson Patriotic Quotations

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.

Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing.

All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.

It is our duty still to endeavor to avoid war; but if it shall actually take place, no matter by whom brought on, we must defend ourselves. If our house be on fire, without inquiring whether it was fired from within or without, we must try to extinguish it.

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.

Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.

Errors of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.

A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.

Evil triumphs when good men do nothing.

The cement of this union is the heart-blood of every American.

My God! How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy!

We confide in our strength, without boasting of it, we respect that of others, without fearing it.

The Constitution is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please.

That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.

My heart trembles when I reflect that God is just