The quotations of

Thomas Jefferson

Founding Father, U.S. president from 1801 to 1809

1743–1826

73 quotes, most often on Government, America and Truth & Lies. Part of the U.S. Presidents and Founding Fathers collections.

I think myself that we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.
Letter to William Ludlow (6 September 1824)
- Government
I, however, place economy among the first and most important republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared.
Letter to William Plumer (21 July 1816)
- Economics
- Government
No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free no one ever will.
Letter to George Washington (9 September 1792)
- Government
- Journalism
Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched.
Letter to H. Tompkinson (AKA Samuel Kercheval) (1816)
- Government
- Laws
The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government.
Letter to the Republican Citizens of Washington County, Maryland (31 March 1809)
- Government
In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.
Kentucky Resolutions (1798), Resolution 9
- Government
- Power
When in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Separation.
The Declaration of Independence (1776)In context
In every stage of these Oppressions we have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble Terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated Injury.
The Declaration of Independence (1776)In context
- Government
- Justice

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