Thomas Jefferson Government Quotations

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

The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.

So confident am I in the intentions, as well as wisdom, of the government, that I shall always be satisfied that what is not done, either cannot, or ought not to be done.

Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.

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.

Only aim to do your duty, and mankind will give you credit where you fail.

History, in general, only informs us of what bad government is.

Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government.

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.

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.

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.

The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind.

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

No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free no one ever will.

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.

I own that I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.

I find that he is happiest of whom the world says least, good or bad.

The only purpose of government is to protect the people.

If people let government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny.

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.

When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.

We are endeavoring, too, to reduce the government to the practice of a rigorous economy, to avoid burdening the people, and arming the magistrate with patronage of money, which might be used to corrupt and undermine the principles of our government

We in America do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate.

The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government

A republican government is slow to move, yet when once in motion, its momentum becomes irresistible

A bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inferences

I hope we shall take warning from the example of England and crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations which dare already to challenge our Government to trial, and bid defiance to the laws of our country

I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.

A government big enough to supply you with everything you need is a government big enough to take away everything that you have.... The course of history shows that as the government grows, liberty decreases.

The freedom of the press is on of the great bulwarks of liberty, and can never be restrained but by a despotic government

The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as they are injurious to others.

I consider the government of the U.S. as interdicted by the Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions, their doctrines, discipline, or exercises.

We have solved, by fair experiment, the great and interesting question whether freedom of religion is compatible with order in government and obedience to the laws. And we have experienced the quiet as well as the comfort which results from leaving every one to profess freely and openly those principles of religion which are the inductions of his own reason and the serious convictions of his own inquiries.

the qualifications for self-government in society are not innate. they are the result of habit and long training.

no one more sincerely wishes the spread of information among mankind than I do, and none has greater confidence in it's effect towards supporting free & good government.

A single good government is a blessing to the whole earth.

[Emigrants] will bring with them the principles of the governments they leave, imbibed in their early youth; or, if able to throw off, it will be in exchange for an unbounded licentiousness, passing, as is usual, from one extreme to another. It would be a miracle were they to stop precisely at the point of temperate liberty.

To make us one nation as to foreign concerns, and keep us distinct in Domestic ones gives the outline of the proper division of powers between the general [national] and particular [state] governments.

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.

In a government bottomed on the will of all, the... liberty of every individual citizen becomes interesting to all.

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.

An hereditary aristocracy... will change the form of our governments from the best to the worst in the world.

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.

The federal government is our servant, not our master.

Societies exist under three forms sufficiently distinguishable. 1. Without government, as among our Indians. 2. Under governments wherein the will of every one has a just influence, as is the case in England in a slight degree, and in our states, in a great one. 3. Under governments of force: as is the case in all other monarchies and in most of the other republics. To have an idea of the curse of existence under these last, they must be seen. It is a government of wolves over sheep.

Where everyman is participator in the government of affairs, not merely at an election one day in the year but everyday, he will let the heart be torn out of his body sooner than his power be wrested from him by a Caesar or a Bonaparte.

We need a revolution every 20 years just to keep government honest.

When the people are afraid of the government, that's tyranny. But when the government is afraid of the people, that's liberty.

A true patriot will defend his country from its government.

It is important to strengthen the State governments; and as this cannot be done by any change in the Federal Constitution (for the preservation of that is all we need contend for), it must be done by the States themselves, erecting such barriers at the constitutional line as cannot be surmounted either by themselves or by the General Government. The only barrier in their power is a wise government. A weak one will lose ground in every contest.

Taxation is, in fact, the most difficult function of government and that against which their citizens are most apt to be refractory.

How to check these unconstitutional invasions of rights by the Federal judiciary? Not by impeachment in the first instance, but by a strong protestation of both houses of Congress that such and such doctrines advanced by the Supreme Court are contrary to the Constitution; and if afterwards they relapse into the same heresies, impeach and set the whole adrift. For what was the government divided into three branches, but that each should watch over the others and oppose their usurpations?

Religion, morality, and knowledge are necessary for good government... Therefore schools and the means of educating the people should always be encouraged.

No government should be without critics. If its intentions are good then it has nothing to fear from criticism.

I do verily believe that a single, consolidated government would become the most corrupt government on the earth.

The present generation has the same right of self-government which the past one has exercised for itself.

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.

It is a misnomer to call a government republican in which a branch of the supreme power is independent of the nation.

My most earnest wish is to see the republican element of popular control pushed to the maximum of its practicable exercise. I shall then believe that our government may be pure and perpetual.

The further the departure from direct and constant control by the citizens, the less has the government of the ingredient of republicanism...

Should look forward to a time, and that not a distant one, when corruption in this, as in the country from which we derive our origin, will have seized the heads of government, and be spread by them through the body of the people; when they will purchase the voices of the people, and make them pay the price.

We think, in America, that it is necessary to introduce the people into every department of government, as far as they are capable of exercising it, and that this is the only way to ensure a long continued and honest administration of its powers.

Would the honest patriot, in the full tide of successful experiment, abandon a government which has so far kept us free and firm on the theoretic and visionary fear that this Government, the world's best hope, may by possibility want energy to preserve itself? I trust not.

I would rather have newspapers without a government than a government without newspapers.

As government grows, freedom recedes.

The constitution has divided the powers of government into three branches, Legislative, Executive and Judiciary, lodging each with a distinct magistracy. The Legislative it has given completely to the Senate and House of Representatives. It has declared that the Executive powers shall be vested in the President, submitting special articles of it to a negative by the Senate, and it has vested the Judiciary power in the courts of justice, with certain exceptions also in favor of the Senate.

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

To take a single step beyond the boundaries specially drawn around the powers of Congress is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible to definition.

In a virtuous government, and more especially in times like these, public offices are what they should be - burdens to those appointed to them which it would be wrong to decline, though foreseen to bring them intense labor and great private loss.

They are exactly the persons who are to succeed to the government of our country and to rule its future enmities, its friendships and fortunes.

I think myself that we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious. Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have ... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases. The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first.

I deny the power of the general government to making paper money, or anything else a legal tender.

May it be to the world... to assume the blessings and security of self-government.

ONLY a government that is AFRAID of its citizens tries to control them.

Civil government being the sole object of forming societies, its administration must be conducted by common consent.

[T]he people seem to have deposited the monarchical and taken up the republican government with as much ease as would have attended their throwing off an old and putting on a new suit of clothes.

[I]n Great-Britain it is said that their constitution relies on the house of commons for honesty, and the lords for wisdom; whichwould be a rational reliance if honesty were to be bought with money, and if wisdom were hereditary.

Government is being founded on opinion, the opinion of the public, even when it is wrong, ought to be respected to a certain degree.

The persons and property of our citizens are entitled to the protection of our government in all places where they may lawfully go.

[If] the nature of ... government [were] a subordination of the civil to the ecclesiastical power, I [would] consider it as desperate for long years to come. Their steady habits [will] exclude the advances of information, and they [will] seem exactly where they [have always been]. And there [the] clergy will always keep them if they can. [They] will follow the bark of liberty only by the help of a tow-rope.

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.

In the constitution of Spain as proposed by the late Cortes, there was a principle entirely new to me:... that no person born after that day should ever acquire the rights of citizenship until he could read and write. It is impossible sufficiently to estimate the wisdom of this provision. Of all those which have been thought of for securing fidelity in the administration of the government, constant reliance to the principles of the constitution, and progressive amendments with the progressive advances of the human mind or changes in human affairs, it is the most effectual.

The diffusion of information and the arraignment of all abuses at the bar of public reason, I deem [one of] the essential principles of our government, and consequently [one of] those which ought to shape its administration.

It [appears] that however certain forms of government are better calculated than others to protect individuals in the free exercise of their natural rights, and are at the same time themselves better guarded against degeneracy, yet experience [has] shown that, even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.

... I have sworn upon the altar of god...

With respect to our State and federal governments, I do not think their relations correctly understood by foreigners. They generally suppose the former subordinate to the latter. But this is not the case. They are co-ordinate departments of one simple and integral whole.

The best commentary on the principles of government which has ever been written.

That government that governs least governs best.

[States and the Federal government are] coordinate departments of one simple and integral whole... The one is the domestic, the other the foreign branch of the same government.

I am convinced that those societies (such as the Native American peoples) which live without government enjoy in their general mass an infinitely greater degree of happiness than those who live under the European governments. Among the former, public opinion is in the place of law, & restrains morals as powerfully as laws ever did anywhere. Among the latter, under pretence of governing they have divided their nations into two classes, wolves & sheep. I do not exaggerate.

The tumults in America I expected would have produced in Europe an unfavorable opinion of our political state. But it has not. On the contrary, the small effect of these tumults seems to have given more confidence in the firmness of our governments. The interposition of the people themselves on the side of government has had a great effect on the opinion here in Europe.

I'd rather have newspapers and no government than government and no newspapers.

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.

It should be remembered, as an axiom of eternal truth in politics, that whatever power in any government is independent, is absolute also.

Had not a conviction of the danger to which an unlimited occupation of the executive chair would expose the republican Constitution of our Government, made it conscientiously a duty to retire when I did, the fear of becoming a dotard and of being insensible of it, would of itself have resisted all solicitations to remain.

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.

Perhaps it will be found that to obtain a just republic (and it is to secure our just rights that we resort to government at all) it must be so extensive as that local egoisms may never reach its greater part; that on every particular question, a majority may be found in its councils free from particular interests, and giving, therefore, an uniform prevalence to the principles of justice.

With all the imperfections of our present government, it is without comparison the best existing, or that ever did exist.

[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.

The issuing power [of money] should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.