What the Forefathers Said: Thomas Jefferson
This is the first in a series that I am calling “What the Forefathers Said,” in which I will post quotes from America’s founding fathers that have just as much immediate importance today as when they were spoken.
________________________________
These statements are attributed to Thomas Jefferson:
1) No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free, no one ever will.
2) 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.
3) When all government ...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, and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.
4) Were we directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we should soon want bread.
5) To consider judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions is a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy.
6) I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.
7) I was for extending the rights of suffrage to all who had a permanent intention of living in the country…. whoever intends to live in a country must wish that country well, and has a natural right of assisting in the preservation of it…
8) Shall oppressed humanity find no asylum on this globe?
9) Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.
10) Educate and inform the whole mass of the people… They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.
11) 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.
12) The government you elect is the government you deserve.
13) The greatest good we can do our country is to heal its party divisions and make them one people.
14) I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all.
________________________________
Thomas Jefferson did NOT say:
1) If serving in an elected office ever becomes a career, corruption will surely follow.
Though, In a letter to James Madison, Thomas Jefferson expressed concern over the failure of "rotation in office." A Monticello historian said that concern was likely in reference to the presidency.
_______________________________
..
If they are not listed above, please post your favorite Thomas Jefferson quotes in the comments below.
Click HEREto read the second in this series (quotes from John Adams).
_______________________________
Share this article on Facebook.
..
