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Quotes about government

575 quotes from 235 people

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The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object.
Thomas Jefferson1743–1826
History, in general, only informs us what bad government is.
Thomas Jefferson1743–1826
A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public debt…If the game runs sometime against us at home, we must have patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at stake.
Thomas Jefferson1743–1826From a letter to John Taylor (June 1798), after the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts
Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.
Thomas Jefferson1743–1826Letter to Richard Price (8 January 1789)
The Constitution of the United States asserts that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves; that it is their right and duty.
Thomas Jefferson1743–1826Letter to Justice William Johnson (1823)
Experience declares that man is the only animal which devours his own kind; for I can apply no milder term to the governments of Europe, and to the general prey of the rich on the poor.
Thomas Jefferson1743–1826Letter to Colonel Edward Carrington (16 January 1787)
- Money
I hope we shall… crush in it’s birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country.
Thomas Jefferson1743–1826to George Logan, 1816
- Business
The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest.
Thomas Jefferson1743–1826A Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774)
- Truth & Lies
The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground.
Thomas Jefferson1743–1826Letter to Edward Carrington, Paris (27 May 1788)
- Liberty
Knowing that religion does not furnish grosser bigots than law, I expect little from old judges.
Thomas Jefferson1743–1826Letter to Thomas Cooper (1810)
- Clever Jabs
- Laws
I think myself that we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.
Thomas Jefferson1743–1826Letter to William Ludlow (6 September 1824)
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 Jefferson1743–1826Letter to William Plumer (21 July 1816)
- Economics
No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free no one ever will.
Thomas Jefferson1743–1826Letter to George Washington (9 September 1792)
- Journalism
Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched.
Thomas Jefferson1743–1826Letter to H. Tompkinson (AKA Samuel Kercheval) (1816)
- Laws
The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government.
Thomas Jefferson1743–1826Letter to the Republican Citizens of Washington County, Maryland (31 March 1809)