Thomas Jefferson Quotes About Liberty
-
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.
→ -
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.
→ -
In a republican nation whose citizens are to be led by reason and persuasion and not by force, the art of reasoning becomes of first importance.
→ -
The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.
→ -
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.
→ -
The future inhabitants of [both] the Atlantic and Mississippi states will be our sons. We think we see their happiness in their union, and we wish it. Events may prove otherwise; and if they see their interest in separating why should we take sides? God bless them both, and keep them in union if it be for their good, but separate them if it be better.
→ -
Liberty is the great parent of science and of virtue; and a nation will be great in both in proportion as it is free.
→ -
The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases.
→ -
When all government ...in little as in great things... shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power; it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another, and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.
→ -
The public school system: "Usually a twelve year sentence of mind control. Crushing creativity, smashing individualism, encouraging collectivism and compromise, destroying the exercise of intellectual inquiry, twisting it instead into meek subservience to authority." - Walter Karp, Editor Harper's Magazine The ground of liberty is to be gained by inches, and we must be contented to secure what we can get from time to time and eternally press forward for what is yet to get. It takes time to persuade men to do even what is for their own good.
→ -
[We should be] determined... to sever ourselves from the union we so much value rather than give up the rights of self-government... in which alone we see liberty, safety and happiness.
→ -
The Bible is the cornerstone of liberty.
→ -
Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.
→ -
The order of nature [is] that individual happiness shall be inseparable from the practice of virtue.
→ -
Yet the hour of emancipation is advancing ... this enterprise is for the young; for those who can follow it up, and bear it through to it's consummation. It shall have all my prayers, and these are the only weapons of an old man.
→ -
He [Washington] has often declared to me that he considered our new constitution as an experiment on the practicability of republican government, and with what dose of liberty man could be trusted for his own good; that he was determined the experiment should have a fair trial, and would lose the last drop of his blood in support of it. And these declarations he repeated to me the oftener and the more pointedly.
→ -
Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have remover their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are 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.
→ -
The last hope of human liberty in this world rests on us. we ought, for so dear a stake, to sacrifice every attachment & every enmity.
→ -
The commotions that have taken place in America, as far as they are yet known to me, offer nothing threatening. They are a proof that the people have liberty enough, and I could not wish them less than they have. If the happiness of the mass of the people can be secured at the expense of a little tempest now and then, or even of a little blood, it will be a precious purchase. 'Malo libertatem periculosam quam quietem servitutem.' Let common sense and common honesty have fair play, and they will soon set things to rights.
→ -
Whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force.
→ -
Never fear the want of business. A man who qualifies himself well for his calling, never fails of employment.
→ -
All persons shall have full and free liberty of religious opinion; nor shall any be compelled to frequent or maintain any religious institution.
→ -
What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man! Who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment & death itself in vindication of his own liberty, and the next moment ... inflict on his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose.
→ -
The evidence of [the] natural right [of expatriation], like that of our right to life, liberty, the use of our faculties, the pursuit of happiness, is not left to the feeble and sophistical investigations of reason, but is impressed on the sense of every man. We do not claim these under the charters of kings or legislators, but under the King of Kings.
→ -
A morsel of genuine history is a thing so rare as to be always valuable.
→ -
The value of science to a republican people, the security it gives to liberty by enlightening the minds of its citizens, the protection it affords against foreign power, the virtue it inculcates, the just emulation of the distinction it confers on nations foremost in it; in short, its identification with power, morals, order and happiness (which merits to it premiums of encouragement rather than repressive taxes), are considerations [that should] always [be] present and [bear] with their just weight.
→ -
The policy of the American government is to leave their citizens free, neither restraining nor aiding them in their pursuits.
→ -
I am entirely persuaded that the agitations of the public mind advance its powers, and that at every vibration between the points of liberty and despotism, something will be gained for the former. As men become better informed, their rulers must respect them the more.
→ -
Under the law of nature, all men are born free, every one comes into the world with a right to his own person, which includes the liberty of moving and using it at his own will. This is what is called personal liberty, and is given him by the Author
→ -
The contradictory experiments of chemists leave us at liberty to conclude what we please. My conclusion is, that art has not yet invented sufficient aids to enable such subtle bodies [air, light, &c.] to make a well-defined impression on organs as blunt as ours; that it is laudable to encourage investigation but to hold back conclusion.
→
Related Authors
-
Benjamin Franklin Founding Father of the United States -
Alexander Hamilton Founding Father of the United States -
Jefferson Davis Former President of the Confederate States of America -
Andrew Jackson 7th U.S. President -
Franklin D. Roosevelt 32nd U.S. President -
Theodore Roosevelt 26th U.S. President -
Ronald Reagan 40th U.S. President -
John Locke Philosopher -
George Washington 1st U.S. President -
Abigail Adams Former First Lady of the United States -
James Madison 4th U.S. President -
Patrick Henry Governor of Virginia -
Abraham Lincoln 16th U.S. President -
John Adams 2nd U.S. President -
Marquis de Lafayette Political figure -
Aaron Burr Former Vice President of the United States -
John Quincy Adams 6th U.S. President -
Ulysses S. Grant 18th U.S. President -
James Monroe 5th U.S. President -
Thomas Paine Author