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Thomas Jefferson
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Great Quotes By: THOMAS JEFFERSON |
Notes on Virginia, 1782:
God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the Gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever. |
Opinion on National Bank, 1791:
They are not to do anything they please
to provide for the general welfare, but only to lay taxes
for that purpose. To consider the latter phrase not as
describing the purpose of the first, but as giving a
distinct and independent power to do any act they please
which might be for the good of the Union, would render all
the preceding and subsequent enumerations of power
completely useless. It would reduce the whole instrument to
a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power
to do whatever would be for the good of the United States;
and, as they would be the sole judges of the good or evil,
it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please...
Certainly no such universal power was meant to be given
them. It was intended to lace them up straitly within the
enumerated powers and those without which, as means, these
powers could not be carried into effect. |
First Inaugural Address, 1801:
Sometimes it is said that man cannot be
trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be
trusted with the government of others? Or have we found
angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history
answer this question. |
Letter to Joseph Priestley, 1802:
Though written constitutions may be
violated in moments of passion or delusion, yet they furnish
a text to which those who are watchful may again rally and
recall the people. They fix, too, for the people the
principles of their political creed. |
Letter to James Fishback, 1809:
The practice of morality being necessary
for the well-being of society, [our Creator] has taken care
to impress its precepts so indelibly on our hearts that they
shall not be effaced by the subtleties of our brain. |
Letter to Valentine de Foronda, 1809:
I never did, or countenanced, in public
life, a single act inconsistent with the strictest good
faith; having never believed there was one code of morality
for a public, and another for a private man. |
Letter to Samuel Kercheval, 1816:
A departure from principle in one instance
becomes a precedent for a second; that second for a third;
and so on, till the bulk of the society is reduced to be
mere automatons of misery, to have no sensibilities left but
for sin and suffering. |
Letter to Chas. Yancey, 1816:
If a nation expects to be ignorant and
free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was
and never will be. |
Letter to Albert Gallatin, 1817:
Our tenet ever was … that Congress had not unlimited powers to provide for the
general welfare, but were restrained to those specifically
enumerated; and that, as it was never meant that they should provide
for that welfare but by the exercise of the enumerated powers, so it
could not have been meant they should raise money for purposes which
the enumeration did not place under their action. |
Letter to William Johnson, 1823:
On every question of construction carry
ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was
adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates and
instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the
text or invented against it, conform to the probable one in
which it was passed. |
Selected by Dr. Alan Snyder 
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