|
Thomas Jefferson 1743-1826 "There is not a truth existing which I fear or would wish unknown to the whole world."
|
We hold these truths to be
self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their
Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and
the pursuit of Happiness.
— That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving
their just powers from the consent of the governed,
— That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is
the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new
Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers
in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and
Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established
should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all
experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are
sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are
accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably
the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is
their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new
Guards for their future security
"A free people claim their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate."
— Rights of British America, 1774
"All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride legitimately, by the grace of God."
— letter to Roger C. Weightman, June 24, 1826
"An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow
citizens ... There has never been a moment of my life in which I should have relinquished for it the enjoyments of my family, my farm, my friends & books."
— letter to John Melish, January 13, 1813
"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."
— 1802
"It has long, however, been my opinion, and I have never shrunk from its expression ... The germ of dissolution of our federal government is in the constitution of the federal judiciary; an irresponsible body, (for impeachment is scarcely a scare-crow) working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped from the States, and the government of all be consolidated into one."
— letter to Charles Hammond, August 18, 1821
"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."
— letter to Judge Spencer Roane, September 6, 1819
"At the establishment of our constitutions, the judiciary bodies were supposed to be the most helpless and harmless members of the government. Experience, however, soon showed in what way they were to become the most dangerous; that the insufficiency of the means provided for their removal gave them a freehold and irresponsibility in office; that their decisions, seeming to concern individual suitors only, pass silent and unheeded by the public at large; that these decisions, nevertheless, become law by precedent, sapping, by little and little, the foundations of the constitution, and working its change by construction, before any one has perceived that that invisible and helpless worm has been busily employed in consuming its substance. In truth, man is not made to be trusted for life, if secured against all liability to account."
— letter to Monsieur A. Coray, Oct 31, 1823
"The construction applied...to those parts of the Constitution of the United States which delegate Congress a power ... ought not to be construed as themselves to give unlimited powers, nor a part to be so taken as to destroy the whole residue of that instrument."
— Draft Kentucky Resolutions, 1798
"The great object of my fear is the federal judiciary. That body, like gravity, ever acting, with noiseless foot, and unalarming advance, gaining ground step by step, and holding what it gains, is engulfing insidiously the special governments into the jaws of that which feeds them."
— letter to Judge Spencer Roane, Mar 9, 1821
"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."
— letter to Thomas Ritchie, December 25, 1820
"Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition."
— Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 19, 1787
"Give up money, give up fame, give up science, give the earth itself and all it contains rather than do an immoral act. And never suppose that in any possible situation, or under any circumstances, it is best for you to do a dishonorable thing, however slightly so it may appear to you ... From the practice of the purest virtue, you may be assured you will derive the most sublime comforts in every moment of life, and in the moment of death."
— letter to Peter Carr, August 19, 1785
"But of all the views of this law none is more important, none more legitimate, than that of rendering the people the safe, as they are the ultimate, guardians of their own liberty. For this purpose the reading in the first stage, where they will receive their whole education, is proposed, as has been said, to be chiefly historical. History by apprising them of the past will enable them to judge of the future; it will avail them of the experience of other times and other nations; it will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men; it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume; and knowing it, to defeat its views."
— Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 14, 1781
"A morsel of genuine history is a thing so rare as to be always valuable."
— September 8, 1817
"During the course of administration, and in order to disturb it, the artillery of the press has been leveled against us, charged with whatsoever its licentiousness could devise or dare. These abuses of an institution so important to freedom and science are deeply to be regretted, inasmuch as they tend to lessen its usefulness and to sap its safety."
— Second Inaugural Address, December 9, 1805
"But with respect to future debt; would it not be wise and just for that nation to declare in the constitution they are forming that neither the legislature, nor the nation itself can validly contract more debt, than they may pay within their own age, or within the term of 19 years."
— September 6, 1789
"Cherish, therefore, the spirit of our people, and keep alive their attention. Do not be too severe upon their errors, but reclaim them by enlightening them. If once they become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress, and Assemblies, Judges, and Governors, shall all become wolves."
— letter to Edward Carrington, January 16, 1787
"Harmony in the married state is the very first object to be aimed at."
— letter to Mary Jefferson Eppes, January 7, 1798
"Honor, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us. We cannot endure the infamy and guilt of resigning succeeding generations to that wretchedness which inevitably awaits them if we basely entail hereditary bondage on them."
— Declaration of the Causes and Necessities of Taking up Arms, July 6, 1775
"I have been happy ... in believing
that ... whatever follies we may be led into as to foreign nations, we shall never give up our Union, the last anchor of our hope, and that alone which is to prevent this heavenly country from becoming an arena of gladiators."
— letter to Elbridge Gerry, May 13, 1797
"I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."
— letter to Benjamin Rush, September 23, 1800
"I leave to others the sublime delights of riding in the storm, better pleased with sound sleep and a warmer berth below it encircled, with the society of neighbors, friends and fellow laborers of the earth rather than with spies and sycophants ... I have no ambition to govern men. It is a painful and thankless office."
— December 28, 1796
"I think all the world would gain by setting commerce at perfect liberty."
— July 7, 1785
"I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious."
— letter to William Ludlow, September 6, 1824
"If a nation expects to be ignorant
... and free ... in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
— December 28, 1796
"If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy."
— letter to Thomas Cooper, Nov 29, 1802
"In our private pursuits it is a great advantage that every honest employment is deemed honorable. I am myself a nail-maker."
— letter to Jean Nicolas Démeunier, April 29, 1795
"It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself. Subject opinion to coercion: whom will you make your inquisitors?"
— Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 17, 1781
"Laws are made for men of ordinary understanding and should, therefore, be construed by the ordinary rules of common sense. Their meaning is not to be sought for in metaphysical subtleties which may make anything mean everything or nothing at pleasure."
— letter to William Johnson, June 12, 1823
"No freeman shall be debarred the use of arms [within his own lands]."
— Draft Constitution for the State of Virginia, June, 1776
"One loves to possess arms, though they hope never to have occasion for them."
— June 19, 1796
"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground."
— letter to Edward Carrington, May 27, 1788
"To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it."
— letter to Joseph Milligan, April 6, 1816
"We have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other."
— letter to John Holmes, Apr 22, 1820
"With those who wish to think amiss of me, I have learned to be perfectly indifferent; but where I know a mind to be ingenuous, and to need only truth to set it to rights, I cannot be passive."
— letter to Abigail Adams, 1804
"When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another."
— letter to Charles Hammond, August 18, 1821
"This was the object of the Declaration of Independence. Not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of, not merely to say things which had never been said before; but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independent stand we are compelled to take. Neither aiming at originality of principle or sentiment, nor yet copied from any particular and previous writing, it was intended to be an expression of the American mind, and to give to that expression the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion."
— letter to Henry Lee, May 8, 1825
"This letter will, to you, be as one from the dead. The writer will be in the grave before you can weigh its counsels. Your affectionate and excellent father has requested that I would address to you something which might possibly have a favorable influence on the course of life you have to run; and I too, as a namesake, feel an interest in that course. Few words will be necessary, with good dispositions on your part. Adore God. Reverence and cherish your parents. Love your neighbor as yourself, and your country more than yourself. Be just. Be true. Murmur not at the ways of Providence. So shall the life into which you have entered be the portal to one of eternal and ineffable bliss. And if to the dead it is permitted to care for the things of this world, every action of your life will be under my regard. Farewell."
— letter to Thomas Jefferson Smith, February 21, 1825
