Message from Thomas Jefferson
Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day, but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, unalterable through every change of ministers, too plainly prove a deliberate, systematical plan of reducing us to slavery. - Thomas Jefferson
A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have. - Thomas Jefferson
Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God! - Thomas Jefferson
Does the government fear us? Or do we fear the government? When the people fear the government, tyranny has found victory. The federal government is our servant, not our master! - Thomas Jefferson
The central bank is an institution of the most deadly hostility existing against the Principles and form of our Constitution. I am an Enemy to all banks discounting bills or notes for anything but Coin. If the American People allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the People of all their Property until their Children will wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered. - Thomas Jefferson
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. - Thomas Jefferson
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. - Thomas Jefferson
Yes, we did produce a near-perfect republic. But will they keep it? Or will they, in the enjoyment of plenty, lose the memory of freedom? Material abundance without character is the path of destruction. - Thomas Jefferson
You have only the freedoms that you are willing to fight and die for. - Thomas Jefferson
It astonishes me to find... [that so many] of our countrymen... should be contented to live under a system which leaves to their governors the power of taking from them the trial by jury in civil cases, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of commerce, the habeas corpus laws, and of yoking them with a standing army. This is a degeneracy in the principles of liberty... which I [would not have expected for at least] four centuries. - Thomas Jefferson to William Stephens Smith, 1788
The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite. - Thomas Jefferson
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 control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. - Thomas Jefferson, letter to William C. Jarvis, September 28, 1820
Dissent is the highest form of patriotism - Thomas Jefferson
Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press and that cannot be limited without being lost. - Thomas Jefferson
Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies. - Thomas Jefferson
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 Jefferson
The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not. - Thomas Jefferson
No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms. - Thomas Jefferson
... whenever any form of government becomes destructive... it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it... - Thomas Jefferson
If the children are untaught, their ignorance and vices will in future life cost us much dearer in their consequences than it would have done in their correction by a good education. - Thomas Jefferson
We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honour. - Thomas Jefferson
The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground. - Thomas Jefferson
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. - Thomas Jefferson
Jefferson's "Commonplace Book," 1774-1776 Laws that forbid the carrying of arms... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes.... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve, rather, to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man. - Thomas Jefferson
What is freedom? Freedom is the right to choose: the right to create for oneself the alternatives of choice. Without the possibility of choice and the exercise of choice a man is not a man but a member, an instrument, a thing. - Thomas Jefferson
http://www.constitution.org/
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