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Founders' Quote Database

Thomas Jefferson

letter to Roger C. Weightman — 1826
Category: Rights
All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride legitimately, by the grace of God.

Thomas Jefferson

Rights of British America — 1774
Category: Rights
A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.

Thomas Jefferson

Letter to James Monroe — 1791
Category: Rights
Natural rights [are] the objects for the protection of which society is formed and municipal laws established.

Thomas Jefferson

Letter to John Cartwright — 1824
Category: Rights
Nothing then is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man.

Thomas Jefferson

First Inaugural Address — 1801
Category: Rights
All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.

Thomas Jefferson

letter to Abigail Adams — 1804
Category: Judiciary
[T]he opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves, in their, own sphere of action, but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch.

Thomas Jefferson

letter to Judge William Johnson — 1823
Category: Separation of Powers
[T]o preserve the republican form and principles of our Constitution and cleave to the salutary distribution of powers which that [the Constitution] has established...are the two sheet anchors of our Union. If driven from either, we shall be in danger of foundering.

Thomas Jefferson

letter to Edward Coles — 1814
Category: Slavery
The love of justice and the love of country plead equally the cause of these people, and it is a moral reproach to us that they should have pleaded it so long in vain.

Thomas Jefferson

Autobiography — 1821
Category: Slavery
Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free.

Thomas Jefferson

deleted portion of a draft of the Declaration of Independence — 1776
Category: Slavery
He [King George] has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred right of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither.

Thomas Jefferson

letter to John Wayles Eppes — 1813
Category: Taxation
Taxes should be continued by annual or biennial reeactments, because a constant hold, by the nation, of the strings of the public purse is a salutary restraint from which an honest government ought not wish, nor a corrupt one to be permitted, to be free.

Thomas Jefferson

letter to Joseph Milligan — 1816
Category: Taxation
To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.

Thomas Jefferson

Autobiography — 1821
Category: Congress
If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send 150 lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, & talk by the hour? That 150 lawyers should do business together ought not to be expected.

Thomas Jefferson

letter to Edward Coles — 1814
Category: Tyranny
I had always hoped that the younger generation receiving their early impressions after the flame of liberty had been kindled in every breast...would have sympathized with oppression wherever found, and proved their love of liberty beyond their own share of it.

Thomas Jefferson

letter to Benjamin Rush — 1800
Category: Tyranny
I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

Thomas Jefferson

Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 17 — 1781
Category: Virtue
Those who labour in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen, people, whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue.

Thomas Jefferson

letter to James Madison — 1797
Category: Separation of Powers
The principle of the Constitution is that of a separation of legislative, Executive and Judiciary functions, except in cases specified. If this principle be not expressed in direct terms, it is clearly the spirit of the Constitution, and it ought to be so commented and acted on by every friend of free government.

Thomas Jefferson

letter to John Adams — 1813
Category: Government
For I agree with you that there is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents.

Thomas Jefferson

Notes on Virginia, Query 19 — 1781
Category: Poverty
Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.

Thomas Jefferson

letter to Michael Megear — 1823
Category: Poverty
It is a duty certainly to give our sparings to those who want; but to see also that they are faithfully distributed, and duly apportioned to the respective wants of those receivers. And why give through agents whom we know not, to persons whom we know not, and in countries from which we get no account, where we can do it at short hand, to objects under our eye, through agents we know, and to supply wants we see?

Thomas Jefferson

letter to Jean Nicolas DÈmeunier — 1795
Category: Work
In our private pursuits it is a great advantage that every honest employment is deemed honorable. I am myself a nail-maker.

Thomas Jefferson

letter to Thomas Jefferson Smith — 1825
Category: Advice
Adore God. Reverence and cherish your parents. Love your neighbor as yourself, and your country more than yourself. Be just. Be true. Murmur not at the ways of Providence. So shall the life into which you have entered be the portal to one of eternal and ineffable bliss.

Thomas Jefferson

letter to Samuel Miller — 1809
Category: Religious Liberty
I consider the government of the U.S. as interdicted by the Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions, their doctrines, discipline, or exercises.

Thomas Jefferson

letter to a Committee of the Danbury Baptist Association, Connecticut — 1802
Category: Religious Liberty
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between church and State.

Thomas Jefferson

letter to John Adams — 1813
Category: Government
The natural aristocracy I consider as the most precious gift of nature for the instruction, the trusts, and government of society. And indeed it would have been inconsistent in creation to have formed man for the social state, and not to have provided virtue and wisdom enough to manage the concerns of the society. May we not even say that that form of government is the best which provides the most - for a pure selection of these natural aristoi into the offices of government?

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“The great principles of right and wrong are legible to every reader; to pursue them requires not the aid of many counselors. The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest.” —Thomas Jefferson (1775)

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