Thomas Jefferson

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redhawk41

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"A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor and bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government."

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

"I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be."

"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."

"I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion."

"For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their best security."

"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms."

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

"Liberty is to the collective body, what health is to every individual body. Without health no pleasure can be tasted by man; without liberty, no happiness can be enjoyed by society."

"Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear."

"The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers."

"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual."

"It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself."

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

"When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe."

"Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny."

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

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

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

"Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty."

"To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical."

"To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical."

"The spirit of this country is totally adverse to a large military force."

"Force is the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism."

"I am mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, the sale of a book can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too."

"Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence."

"Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."

"The beauty of the second amendment is that it will not be needed until they try to take it."

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

"I have sworn upon the alter of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."

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

"The spirit of 1776 is not dead. It has only been slumbering. The body of the American people is substantially republican. But their virtuous feelings have been played on by some fact with more fiction; they have been the dupes of artful maneuvers, and made for a moment to be willing instruments in forging chains for themselves. But times and truth dissipated the delusion, and opened their eyes."

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

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

"When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on."

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/t/thomas_jefferson.html
 
Yes he was a smart man and yes he was truly a Constitutionalist.
Unfortunately, each of these quotes needs to be vetted and cited.

Example:
"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."


Don't buy it. They weren't worried back then about Socialism. They were worried about Despotism.
Source please.
Rich
 
hehe, Rich you definitely fit this one:

"Shake off all the fears and servile prejudices under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear." --Thomas Jefferson to Peter Carr, 1787. ME 6:258 Papers 12:15

http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jeff0700.htm

we can tackle all of these and maybe even find some bogus ones, i'm not afraid of being proven wrong :)
 
"Still one thing more, fellow citizens - *a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities." --Inaugural Address, Mar. 4, 1801

"I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be." --letter to Thomas Leiper, Monticello June 12, 1815

"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." --to Thomas Cooper, Esq., Washington, Nov. 29, 1802

"I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves ; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education." --to William Charles Jarvis, Monticello September 28, 1820

"For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their best security." --eighth annual message to Congress and House of Representatives, Nov. 8, 1808

"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- from the VA constitution, which TJ helped write

"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty, than those attending too small a degree of it." --to Archibald Stuart, Philadelphia, Dec. 23, 1791

"Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear." --to Peter Carr, Paris, Aug. 10, 1787

The newspapers quote is mangled...
" I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false." --to John Norvell, Washington, Jun. 11, 1807

"It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself." --Notes on Virginia, Query XVII

"When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become corrupt as in Europe, and go to eating one another as they do there." --to James Madison, Paris, Dec. 20, 1787

"History, in general, only informs us what bad government is." --to John Norvell, Washington, Jun. 11, 1807

The 2d amendment [introduced by Massachusetts] which appears to me essential is the restoring the principle of necessary rotation, particularly to the Senate and Presidency : but most of all to the last. Re-eligibility makes him an officer for life, and the disasters inseparable from an elective monarchy, render it preferable if we cannot tread back that step, that we should go forward and take refuge in an hereditary one. Of the correction of this article, however, I entertain no present hope, because I find it has scarcely excited an objection in America. And if it does not take place erelong, it assuredly never will. The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground. As yet our spirits are free. Our jealousy is only put to sleep by the unlimited confidence we all repose in the person to whom we all look as our president. After him inferior characters may perhaps succeed, and awaken us to the danger which his merit has led us into." --to Colonel Carrington, May 27, 1788

"The main body of our citizens, however, remain true to their republican principles; the whole landed interest is republican, and so is a great mass of talents. Against us are the Executive, the Judiciary; two out of three branches of the Legislature, all the officers of the government, all who want to be officers, all timid men who prefer the calm of despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty; British merchants and Americans trading on British capital, speculators and holders in the banks and public funds, a contrivance invented for the purposes of corruption, and for assimilating us in all things to the rotten as well as the sound parts of the British model. It would give you a fever were I to name to you the apostates who have gone over to these heresies, men who were Samsons in the field and Solomons in the council, but who have had their heads shorn by the harlot. England. In short, we are likely to preserve the liberty we have obtained only by unremitting labors and perils." --to Phillip Mazzei, Monticello, Apr. 24, 1796

"Well aware that Almighty God hath created the mind free; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishment s or burdens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the Holy Author of our religion, who being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagte it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do; that the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastic al, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world, and through all time; that to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical; that even the forcing him to support this or that teacher of his own religious persuasion, is depriving him of the comfortable liberty of giving his contributions to the particular pastor whose morals he would make his pattern, and whose powers he feels most persuasive to righteousness, and is withdrawing from the ministry those temporal rewards, which proceeding from an approbation of their personal conduct, are an additional incitement to earnest and unremitting labors for the instruction of man-kind; that our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, more than our opinions in physics or geometry; [and on and on and on...]" --An Act for establishing Religious Freedom, passed in the VA assembly in 1786

"The spirit of this country is totally adverse to a large military force." --to Chandler Price, Washington, Feb. 28, 1807

"...; absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority the vital principle of republics, from which there is no appeal but to force the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism;" --stating general principles in his Mar. 4, 1801 Inauguration Address

"(shenanigans involving M. de Becourt's Sur la Creation du Monde, un System d'Organisation Primitive)... I am really mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, a fact like this can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too, as an offence against religion ; that a question about the sale of a book can be carried before the civil magistrate. Is this then our freedom of religion?" --to Monsieur N. G. Dufief, Monticello, Apr. 19, 1814

"Our government is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence. The engine of consolidation will be the federal judiciary; the two other branches, the corrupting and corrupted instruments." --to Nathaniel Macon, Monticello, Nov. 23, 1821

"...mankind are more disposed to suffer..." --declaration of independence

"The returning good sense of our country threatens abortion to their [various xtian sects'] hopes, and they believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly: for I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." --to Dr. Benjamin Rush, Monticello, Sept. 23, 1800

"The spirit of 1776 is not dead. It has only been slumbering. The body of the American people is substantially republican. But their virtuous feelings have been played on by some fact with more fiction; they have been the dupes of artful manoeuvres, and made for a moment to be willing instruments in forging chains for themselves. But time and truth have dissipated the delusion, and opened their eyes." --to Thomas Lomax, Mar. 12, 1799

"Our last news from Paris is of the 8th of January. So far it seemed that your revolution had got along with a steady peace ; meeting indeed occasional difficulties and dangers, but we are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a feather-bed." --to the Marquis de LaFayette, New York, Apr. 2, 1790

"And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure." --to Colonel Smith, Paris, Nov. 13, 1787

The rest I cannot verify.
 
Still unverified:

"That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves."
(the first clause is from the intro to Volume 9 of the Writings of Thomas Jefferson, and identified as his philosophy, but AFAICT Jefferson never wrote it.)

"Liberty is to the collective body, what health is to every individual body. Without health no pleasure can be tasted by man; without liberty, no happiness can be enjoyed by society." (I doubt it.)

"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual." (may have been another founder)

"When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty." (may have been another founder)

"Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny." (seems to be a pathological rewording of the Decl. of Independence.)

"My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government." (I doubt it. Too pithy.)

"The beauty of the second amendment is that it will not be needed until they try to take it." (I doubt it)

"The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government." (may have been another founder)

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

"When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on." (I doubt it)
 
What, no quotes on his feelings about religion and Christianity?
Click to expand...
No sir.
All of us bow to the wishes and request of the staff to leave religion out of threads.
It's not listed in the FAQ's and it's not disallowed.
It's a request from the staff to not touch on it since it usually results in serious degeneration of the thread.
(What Rich would call high noise to signal ratio)

You've been around long enough to know this.
 
Yes he was a smart man and yes he was truly a Constitutionalist.
Click to expand...
When it suited him to be. When it offended his politics to follow the Constitution, he'd just plain ignore it. Marshall was pretty sly about working that in the Court's favor.
 
What, no quotes on his feelings about religion and Christianity
Click to expand...
It neither breaks my bone nor picks my pocket whether a man believes in twenty gods nor no god. --- Not in quotes because I may have "mangled" it. :)

If still in print, Saul K. Padover's book of Jeffersonian quotes is excellent. Also, hasn't the quote about "the beauty of the second amendment" been refuted?
 
Sodbuster, you can never really refute a quote. That's one reason why I hate quotes that aren't cited. Too many people attribute whatever they feel like to whoever they feel like, and after a decade or two everyone accepts it. But citations don't guarantee that fake quotes won't gain a foothold.

The most important reason for citations, IMHO, is so that interested persons can go to the source and read the quote in context. There are often a multitude of interesting ideas nearby, and someone selected a particular quote to be representative, not to encompass the author's complete line of thought.

These spurious quotes from founders really need to be excised from the internet. They're a plague. We don't need quotes, fake or otherwise, to support our position on limited government and the RKBA. And there are plenty of real ones for occasions where a quote is apropos.

(though there's a difference between quotes used to support an idea and quotes intended purely for humor; the latter can be attributed to anyone and it's okay, because the importance of the quote lies entirely in the text of the quote.)
 
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