Thomas Jefferson Political Quotations

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

An enemy generally says and believes what he wishes.

No duty the Executive had to perform was so trying as to put the right man in the right place.

Resort is had to ridicule only when reason is against us.

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

We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed.

That government is the strongest of which every man feels himself a part.

Politics is such a torment that I advise everyone I love not to mix with it.

No man will ever carry out of the Presidency the reputation which carried him into it.

The wisdom of our ages and the blood of our heroes has been devoted to the attainment of trial by jury. It should be the creed of our political faith.

The tender breasts of ladies were not formed for political convulsion.

The Governor would serve a five-year term and be ineligible for reelection.

No person shall be capable of being a delegate for more than three years in any term of six.

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.

I was dupedby the Secretary of the treasury [Alexander Hamilton], and made a fool for forwarding his schemes, not then sufficiently understood by me; and of all the errors of my political life, this has occasioned the deepest regret.

My passion strengthens daily to quit political turmoil, and retire into the bosom of my family, the only scene of sincere and purehappiness.

The information of the people at large can alone make them the safe as they are the sole depositary of our political and religious freedom.

You and I have formerly seen warm debates and high political passions. But gentlemen of different politics would then speak to each other and separate the business of the Senate from that of society. It is not so now. Men who have been intimate all their lives, cross the streets to avoid meeting, and turn their heads another way, lest they should be obliged to touch their hats. This may do for young men with whom passion is enjoyment. But it is afflicting to peaceable minds. Tranquility is the old man's milk.

I hope the terms of Excellency, Honor, Worship, Esquire, forever disappear from among us... I wish that of Mr. would follow them.

Though written constitutions may be violated in moments of passion or delusion, yet they furnish a text to which those who are watchful may again rally and recall the people; they fix too for the people the principles of their political creed.

The same political parties which now agitiate the US have existed through all time. And in fact the terms of whig and tory belong to natural as well as to civil history. They denote the temper and constitution and mind of different individuals.

Nature intended me for the tranquil pursuits of science, by rendering them my supreme delight. But the enormities of the times in which I have lived, have forced me to take a part in resisting them, and to commit myself on the boisterous ocean of political passions.

I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.

I apprehend... that the total abandonment of the principle of rotation in the offices of President and Senator will end in abuse.

I sincerely join you in abjuring all political connection with every foreign power; and tho I cordially wish well to the progress of liberty in all nations, and would forever give it the weight of our countenance, yet they are not to be touched without contamination from their other bad principles. Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto.

If I could not go to Heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all.

I hope we shall . . . crush in [its] birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations.

The purpose of establishing different houses of legislation is to introduce the influence of different interests or different principles.

It is not by the consolidation or concentration of powers but by their distribution that good government is effected.