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"How soon the labor of men would make a paradise of the whole earth, were it not for misgovernment, and a diversion of all his energies from their proper object -- the happiness of man -- to the selfish interest of kings, nobles, and priests." --Thomas Jefferson to Ellen W. Coolidge, 1825.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. " --Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Colonel Charles Yancey (January 6, 1816)
"I agree with you that it is the duty of every good citizen to use all the opportunities, which occur to him, for preserving documents relating to the history of our country. --Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Hugh P. Taylor (October 4, 1823)
"Truth is the first object." --Thomas Jefferson to Dr. Maese, 1809.
"I, however, place economy among the first and most important republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared." --Thomas Jefferson, Letter to William Plumer (July 21, 1816)
"[It is] the people, to whom all authority belongs." --Thomas Jefferson to Spencer Roane, 1821.
"Whenever our affairs go obviously wrong, the good sense of the people will interpose and set them to rights." --Thomas Jefferson to David Humphreys, 1789.
"Reflection,... with information, is all which our countrymen need, to bring themselves and their affairs to rights." --Thomas Jefferson to James Lewis, Jr., 1798.
"I like to see the people awake and alert. The good sense of the people will soon lead them back if they have erred in a moment of surprise." --Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1786.
"My confidence is that there will for a long time be virtue and good sense enough in our countrymen to correct abuses." --Thomas Jefferson to Edward Rutledge, 1788.
"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the atmosphere." --Thomas Jefferson to Abigail Adams, 1787.
"The people cannot be all, and always, well-informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty." --Thomas Jefferson to William Stephens Smith, 1787.
"Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle." --Thomas Jefferson to John Norvell (June 11, 1807)
"What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them." --Thomas Jefferson to William Stephens Smith, 1787.
- "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. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs." --Thomas Jefferson, Letter to the Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin (1802)
"I think myself that we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious." --Thomas Jefferson, Letter to William Ludlow (September 6, 1824)
"The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind." --Thomas Jefferson, Letter to William Hunter (March 11, 1790)
"We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed." --Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Lafayette (April 2, 1790)
"To preserve the freedom of the human mind then and freedom of the press, every spirit should be ready to devote itself to martyrdom; for as long as we may think as we will, and speak as we think, the condition of man will proceed in improvement." --Thomas Jefferson, Letter to William Green Mumford (June 18, 1799)
"It was by the sober sense of our citizens that we were safely and steadily conducted from monarchy to republicanism, and it is by the same agency alone we can be kept from falling back." Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Arthur Campbell (1797)
"Most codes extend their definitions of treason to acts not really against one's country. They do not distinguish between acts against the government, and acts against the oppressions of the government. The latter are virtues, yet have furnished more victims to the executioner than the former, because real treasons are rare; oppressions frequent. The unsuccessful strugglers against tyranny have been the chief martyrs of treason laws in all countries." --Thomas Jefferson: Report on Spanish Convention, 1792.
"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." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1787.
"I hope, therefore, a bill of rights will be formed to guard the people against the federal government as they are already guarded against their State governments, in most instances." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1788.
"The declaration of rights is, like all other human blessings, alloyed with some inconveniences and not accomplishing fully its object. But the good in this instance vastly outweighs the evil." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1789.
"I like [the declaration of rights] as far as it goes, but I should have been for going further. For instance, the following alterations and additions would have pleased me:
Article 4. The people shall not be deprived or abridged of their right to speak, to write, or otherwise to publish anything but false facts affecting injuriously the life, liberty, property or reputation of others, or affecting the peace of the confederacy with foreign nations.
Article 7. All facts put in issue before any judicature shall be tried by jury except, 1, in cases of admiralty jurisdiction, wherein a foreigner shall be interested; 2, in cases cognizable before a court martial concerning only the regular officers and soldiers of the United States, or members of the militia in actual service in time of war or insurrection; and 3, in impeachments allowed by the Constitution.
Article 8. No person shall be held in confinement more than -- days after he shall have demanded and been refused a writ of habeas corpus by the judge appointed by law, nor more than -- days after such a writ shall have been served on the person holding him in confinement, and no order given on due examination for his remandment or discharge, nor more than -- hours in any place at a greater distance than -- miles from the usual residence of some judge authorized to issue the writ of habeas corpus; nor shall that writ be suspended for any term exceeding one year, nor in any place more than -- miles distant from the State or encampment of enemies or of insurgents.
Article 9. Monopolies may be allowed to persons for their own productions in literature, and their own inventions in the arts, for a term not exceeding -- years, but for no longer term, and no other purpose.
Article 10. All troops of the United States shall stand ipso facto disbanded at the expiration of the term for which their pay and subsistence shall have been last voted by Congress, and all officers and soldiers not natives of the United States shall be incapable of serving in their armies by land, except during a foreign war.
These restrictions, I think, are so guarded as to hinder evil only. However, if we do not have them now, I have so much confidence in my countrymen as to be satisfied that we shall have them as soon as the degeneracy of our government shall render them necessary." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1789.
"It had become an universal and almost uncontroverted position in the several States, that the purposes of society do not require a surrender of all our rights to our ordinary governors; that there are certain portions of right not necessary to enable them to carry on an effective government, and which experience has nevertheless proved they will be constantly encroaching on, if submitted to them; that there are also certain fences which experience has proved peculiarly efficacious against wrong, and rarely obstructive of right, which yet the governing powers have ever shown a disposition to weaken and remove. Of the first kind, for instance, is freedom of religion; of the second, trial by jury, habeas corpus laws, free presses." --Thomas Jefferson to Noah Webster, 1790.
"A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun, therefore, be the constant companion of your walks." --Thomas Jefferson to Peter Carr, 1785
"The constitutions of most of our States assert that all power is inherent in the people; that... it is their right and duty to be at all times armed." --Thomas Jefferson to John Cartwright, 1824.
"None but an armed nation can dispense with a standing army. To keep ours armed and disciplined is therefore at all times important." --Thomas Jefferson, 1803.
"Under the law of nature, all men are born free, every one comes into the world with a right to his own person, which includes the liberty of moving and using it at his own will. This is what is called personal liberty, and is given him by the Author of nature, because necessary for his own sustenance." --Thomas Jefferson: Legal Argument, 1770.
"There are rights which it is useless to surrender to the government and which governments have yet always been found to invade. These are the rights of thinking and publishing our thoughts by speaking or writing; the right of free commerce; the right of personal freedom. There are instruments for administering the government so peculiarly trustworthy that we should never leave the legislature at liberty to change them. The new Constitution has secured these in the executive and legislative department, but not in the judiciary. It should have established trials by the people themselves, that is to say, by jury. There are instruments so dangerous to the rights of the nation and which place them so totally at the mercy of their governors that those governors, whether legislative or executive, should be restrained from keeping such instruments on foot but in well-defined cases. Such an instrument is a standing army." --Thomas Jefferson to David Humphreys, 1789.
"The attempt which has been made to restrain the liberty of our citizens meeting together, interchanging sentiments on what subjects they please and stating their sentiments in the public papers, has come upon us a full century earlier than I expected." --Thomas Jefferson to William Branch Giles, 1794.
"[The] liberty of speaking and writing... guards our other liberties." --Thomas Jefferson: Reply to Philadelphia Democratic Republicans, 1808.
"An equal application of law to every condition of man is fundamental." --Thomas Jefferson to George Hay, 1807.
"The most sacred of the duties of a government [is] to do equal and impartial justice to all its citizens." --Thomas Jefferson: Note in Destutt de Tracy, "Political Economy," 1816.
"To unequal privileges among members of the same society the spirit of our nation is, with one accord, adverse." --Thomas Jefferson to Hugh White, 1801.
"[The] best principles [of our republic] secure to all its citizens a perfect equality of rights." --Thomas Jefferson: Reply to the Citizens of Wilmington, 1809.
"Man [is] a rational animal, endowed by nature with rights and with an innate sense of justice." --Thomas Jefferson to William Johnson, 1823.
"A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate." --Thomas Jefferson: Rights of British America, 1774.
"Nothing... is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man." --Thomas Jefferson to John Cartwright, 1824.
"Natural rights [are] the objects for the protection of which society is formed and municipal laws established." --Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, 1797.
"The Declaration of Independence... [is the] declaratory charter of our rights, and of the rights of man." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Adams Wells, 1819.
"That liberty [is pure] which is to go to all, and not to the few or the rich alone." --Thomas Jefferson to Horatio Gates, 1798.
"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it." --Thomas Jefferson to Archibald Stuart, 1791.
"The freedom and happiness of man... [are] the sole objects of all legitimate government." --Thomas Jefferson to Thaddeus Kosciusko, 1810.
"The only orthodox object of the institution of government is to secure the greatest degree of happiness possible to the general mass of those associated under it." --Thomas Jefferson to M. van der Kemp, 1812.
"I sincerely pray that all the members of the human family may, in the time prescribed by the Father of us all, find themselves securely established in the enjoyment of life, liberty, and happiness." --Thomas Jefferson: Reply to Ellicot Thomas, et al., 1807.
"The principles of government... [are] founded in the rights of man." --Thomas Jefferson to John Cartwright, 1824.
"It is to secure our rights that we resort to government at all." --Thomas Jefferson to Francois D'Ivernois, 1795.
"The spirit of the times may alter, will alter. Our rulers will become corrupt, our people careless. A single zealot may commence persecutor, and better men be his victims. It can never be too often repeated that the time for fixing every essential right on a legal basis is while our rulers are honest and ourselves united. From the conclusion of [their] war [for independence, a nation begins] going down hill. It will not then be necessary to resort every moment to the people for support. They will be forgotten, therefore, and their rights disregarded. They will forget themselves but in the sole faculty of making money, and will never think of uniting to effect a due respect for their rights. The shackles, therefore, which shall not be knocked off at the conclusion of [that] war will remain on [them] long, will be made heavier and heavier, till [their] rights shall revive or expire in a convulsion." --Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia Q.XVII, 1782.
"In endeavors to improve our situation, we should never despair." --Thomas Jefferson to John Quincy Adams, 1817.
"The ground of liberty is to be gained by inches, [and] we must be contented to secure what we can get from time to time and eternally press forward for what is yet to get. It takes time to persuade men to do even what is for their own good." --Thomas Jefferson to Charles Clay, 1790.
"Our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them." --Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia Q.XVII, 1782.
"Were [a right] to be refused, or to be so shackled by regulations, not necessary for... peace and safety... as to render its use impracticable,... it would then be an injury, of which we should be entitled to demand redress." --Thomas Jefferson: Report on Navigation of the Mississippi, 1792.
"No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another, and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him." --Thomas Jefferson to Francis Gilmer, 1816.
"We may consider each generation as a distinct nation, with a right, by the will of its majority, to bind themselves, but none to bind the succeeding generation, more than the inhabitants of another country." --Thomas Jefferson to John Wayles Eppes, 1813.
"[Oppose] with manly firmness [any] invasions on the rights of the people." --Thomas Jefferson: Draft Virginia Constitution, 1776.
"Follow truth as the only safe guide, and... eschew error, which bewilders us in one false consequence after another." --Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1819.
"Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom." --Thomas Jefferson to Nathaniel Macon, 1819.
"I believe... that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another." --Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1816.
"The greatest honor of a man is in doing good to his fellow men, not in destroying them." --Thomas Jefferson: Address to Shawanee Nation, 1807.
"A nation, as a society, forms a moral person, and every member of it is personally responsible for his society." --Thomas Jefferson to George Hammond, 1792.
"Moral duties [are] as obligatory on nations as on individuals." --Thomas Jefferson: The Anas, 1808.
"Political interest [can] never be separated in the long run from moral right." --Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, 1806.
"What institution is insusceptible of abuse in wicked hands?" --Thomas Jefferson to L. H. Girardin, 1815.
"I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others." --Thomas Jefferson to A. L. C. Destutt de Tracy, 1811.
"Force [is] the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism." --Thomas Jefferson: 1st Inaugural, 1801.
"Either force or corruption has been the principle of every modern government." --Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1796.
"Force cannot change right." --Thomas Jefferson to John Cartwright, 1824
"Lay down true principles and adhere to them inflexibly. Do not be frightened into their surrender by the alarms of the timid, or the croakings of wealth against the ascendency of the people." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816.
"I consider the people who constitute a society or nation as the source of all authority in that nation; as free to transact their common concerns by any agents they think proper; to change these agents individually, or the organization of them in form or function whenever they please; that all the acts done by these agents under the authority of the nation are the acts of the nation, are obligatory on them and enure to their use, and can in no wise be annulled of affected by any change in the form of the government or of the persons administering it." --Thomas Jefferson: Opinion on French Treaties, 1793.
"Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." --Thomas Jefferson: Declaration of Independence, 1776.
"I have such reliance on the good sense of the body of the people and the honesty of their leaders that I am not afraid of their letting things go wrong to any length in any cause." --Thomas Jefferson to C. W. F. Dumas, 1788.
"The revolution of 1800... was as real a revolution in the principles of our government as that of 1776 was in its form; not effected indeed by the sword, as that, but by the rational and peaceable instrument of reform, the suffrage of the people." --Thomas Jefferson to Spencer Roane, 1819.
"I am sensible that there are defects in our federal government, yet they are so much lighter than those of monarchies, that I view them with much indulgence. I rely, too, on the good sense of the people for remedy, whereas the evils of monarchical government are beyond remedy." --Thomas Jefferson to David Ramsay, 1787.
"Manfully maintain our good old principle of cherishing and fortifying the rights and authorities of the people in opposition to those who fear them, who wish to take all power from them and to transfer all to Washington." --Thomas Jefferson to Nathaniel Macon, 1826.
"The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to." --Thomas Jefferson to Lafayette, 1823.
"More attention should be paid to the general opinion." --Thomas Jefferson to George Mason, 1791.
"When public opinion changes, it is with the rapidity of thought." --Thomas Jefferson to Charles Yancey, 1816.
"Let common sense and common honesty have fair play, and they will soon set things to rights." --Thomas Jefferson to Ezra Stiles, 1786.
"Cherish... the spirit of our people, and keep alive their attention. Do not be too severe upon their errors, but reclaim them by enlightening them." --Thomas Jefferson to Edward Carrington, 1787.
"[No] degree of power in the hands of government [will] prevent insurrections." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1787.
"The framers of our constitution certainly supposed they had guarded, as well their government against destruction by treason, as their citizens against oppression under pretence of it; and if these ends are not attained, it is of importance to inquire by what means, more effectual, they may be secured." --Thomas Jefferson: 7th Annual Message, 1807.
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