Politics Quotes by Thomas Jefferson

We need a revolution every 20 years just to keep government honest.

— Thomas Jefferson

No man has done everything he can who has done only his best.

— Thomas Jefferson

The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest.

— Thomas Jefferson

The federal government is our servant, not our master.

— Thomas Jefferson

Truth between candid minds can never do harm.

— Thomas Jefferson

The legislative powers of government reach actions only and not opinions.

— Thomas Jefferson

A free government is of all others the most energetic.

— Thomas Jefferson

The basis of our government (is) is opinion of the people.

— Thomas Jefferson

The greatest good we can do our country is to heal its party divisions and make them one people.

— Thomas Jefferson

“Was the government to prescribe us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are now."…

— Thomas Jefferson

If ever this vast country is brought under a single government, it will be one of the most extensive corruption.

— Thomas Jefferson

It should be remembered, as an axiom of eternal truth in politics, that whatever power in any government is independent, is absolute…

— Thomas Jefferson

Our attachment to no nation on earth should supplant our attachment to liberty.

— Thomas Jefferson

The several states composing the United States of America are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government

— Thomas Jefferson

I'd rather have newspapers and no government than government and no newspapers.

— Thomas Jefferson

“A government which can be felt; a government of energy. God send that our country may never have a government, which it…

— Thomas Jefferson

Every people may establish what form of government they please, and change it as they please, the will of the nation being…

— Thomas Jefferson

We shall all consider ourselves unauthorized to saddle posterity with our debts, and morally bound to pay them ourselves; and consequently within…

— Thomas Jefferson

To make us one nation as to foreign concerns, and keep us distinct in Domestic ones gives the outline of the proper…

— Thomas Jefferson

To consider judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions is a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place…

— Thomas Jefferson

Does the government fear us? Or do we fear the government? When the people fear the government, tyranny has found victory. The…

— Thomas Jefferson

I suppose, indeed, that in public life, a man whose political principles have any decided character and who has energy enough to…

— Thomas Jefferson

Would the honest patriot, in the full tide of successful experiment, abandon a government which has so far kept us free and…

— Thomas Jefferson

We exist, and are quoted, as standing proofs that a government, so modeled as to rest continually on the will of the…

— Thomas Jefferson

He [Washington] has often declared to me that he considered our new constitution as an experiment on the practicability of republican government,…

— Thomas Jefferson

Should look forward to a time, and that not a distant one, when corruption in this, as in the country from which…

— Thomas Jefferson

“I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as…

— Thomas Jefferson

The late rebellion in Massachusetts has given more alarm than I think it should have done. Calculate that one rebellion in thirteen…

— Thomas Jefferson

I see,... and with the deepest affliction, the rapid strides with which the federal branch of our government is advancing towards the…

— Thomas Jefferson

It [appears] that however certain forms of government are better calculated than others to protect individuals in the free exercise of their…

— Thomas Jefferson

At the time we were funding our national debt, we heard much about "a public debt being a public blessing"; that the…

— Thomas Jefferson

We may say with truth and meaning, that governments are more or less republican, as they have more or less of the…

— Thomas Jefferson

“When the clergy addressed General Washington on his departure from the government, it was observed in their consultation that he had never…

— Thomas Jefferson

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain…

— Thomas Jefferson

“But our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we…

— Thomas Jefferson

“...never [enter] into dispute or argument with another. I never saw an instance of one of two disputants convincing the other by…

— Thomas Jefferson

“Whereas it appeareth that however certain forms of government are better calculated than others to protect individuals in the free exercise of…

— Thomas Jefferson

“...legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people…

— Thomas Jefferson

I have no ambition to govern men; it is a painful and thankless office.

— Thomas Jefferson

A true patriot will defend his country from its government.

— Thomas Jefferson