Thomas Jefferson citations (458 citations, Page 12)

Thomas Jefferson: 458 citations 0 J'aime

Thomas Jefferson Citations

“Que nous faut-il pour faire de nous un peuple heureux et prospère? Un gouvernement sage et frugal, qui retiendra les hommes de se porter tort l'un à l'autre, et pour le reste les laissera libres de régler leurs propres efforts d'industrie et de progrès, et n'enlèvera pas de la bouche du travailleur le pain qu'il a gagné. Voilà le résumé du bon gouvernement, et voilà ce qui est nécessaire pour boucler le cercle de nos félicités. »”

Thomas Jefferson

With all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and prosperous people? Still one thing more, fellow-citizens,—A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.
en
Premier discours inaugural, 4 mars 1801

effort , faute , hommes

“Chez vous, chers citoyens, vous-mêmes savez au mieux si nous avons fait bien ou mal. La suppression d'agences non nécessaires, d'inutiles établissements et dépenses, nous a permis d'interrompre nos taxes internes. Celles-ci couvrant notre terre d'agents, et ouvrant nos portes à leurs intrusions, avaient déjà entamé ce processus de sanction intime qui, une fois lancé, peut rarement être empêché d'atteindre successivement chaque article de produit et de propriété.”

Thomas Jefferson

At home, fellow citizens, you best know whether we have done well or ill. The suppression of unnecessary offices, of useless establishments and expenses, enabled us to discontinue our internal taxes. These covering our land with officers, and opening our doors to their intrusions, had already begun that process of domiciliary vexation which, once entered, is scarcely to be restrained from reaching successively every article of produce and property.
en
Second discours inaugural, 4 mars 1805

foi

Thomas Jefferson: Citations en anglais

“The Christian god can easily be pictured as virtually the same god as the many ancient gods of past civilizations. The Christian god is a three headed monster; cruel, vengeful and capricious. If one wishes to know more of this raging, three headed beast-like god, one only needs to look at the caliber of people who say they serve him. They are always of two classes: fools and hypocrites.”

Help us translate this quote

Thomas Jefferson

See the Positive Atheism http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/quotes/jeffphony.htm site on the extreme unlikelihood of this quote being authentic. It actually contains some known phrases of Jefferson's, but they are compounded with almost certainly false statements into a highly misrepresentative whole. Jefferson's own opinions on Jesus, God, Christianity and general opinions about them were far more complex than is indicated in this statement.
Misattributed

“This enterprise is for the young; for those who can follow it up, and bear it through to its consummation.”

Help us translate this quote

Thomas Jefferson

1810s, Letter to Edward Coles (1814)

“The policy of American government is to leave its citizens free, neither restraining them nor aiding them in their pursuits.”

Help us translate this quote

Thomas Jefferson

Letter to M. L'Hommande, (1787), as quoted in The Jeffersonian Cyclopedia (1900), edited by John P. Foley, p. 500
1780s

“No one has a natural right to the trade of a money lender, but he who has the money to lend. Let those then among us who have a moneyed capital and who prefer employing it in loans rather than otherwise, set up banks and give cash or national bills for the notes they discount. Perhaps, to encourage them, a larger interest than is legal in the other cases might be allowed them, on the condition of their lending for short periods only.”

Help us translate this quote

Thomas Jefferson

ME 13:277
1810s, Letters to John Wayles Eppes (1813)

“To the existence of banks of discount for cash… there can be no objection, because there can be no danger of abuse, and they are a convenience both to merchants and individuals. I think they should even be encouraged, by allowing them a larger than legal interest on short discounts, and tapering thence, in proportion as the term of discount is lengthened, down to legal interest on those of a year or more. Even banks of deposit, where cash should be lodged, and a paper acknowledgment taken out as its representative, entitled to a return of the cash on demand, would be convenient for remittances, travelling persons, etc. But, liable as its cash would be to be pilfered and robbed, and its paper to be fraudulently re-issued, or issued without deposit, it would require skilful and strict regulation.”

Help us translate this quote

Thomas Jefferson

ME 13:431
1810s, Letters to John Wayles Eppes (1813)

“There are extraordinary situations which require extraordinary interposition. An exasperated people, who feel that they possess power, are not easily restrained within limits strictly regular.”

Help us translate this quote

Thomas Jefferson

1770s, A Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774)

“As pure a son of liberty as I have ever known.”

Help us translate this quote

Thomas Jefferson

Statement about Tadeusz Kościuszko, in a letter to Horatio Gates (1798)
1790s

“I say, the earth belongs to each of these generations during its course, fully and in its own right. The second generation receives it clear of the debts and incumbrances of the first, the third of the second, and so on. For if the first could charge it with a debt, then the earth would belong to the dead and not to the living generation. Then, no generation can contract debts greater than may be paid during the course of its own existence.”

Help us translate this quote

Thomas Jefferson

Letter http://etext.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jeff1340.htm to James Madison (6 September 1789) ME 7:455, Papers 15:393
1780s

“There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me.”

Help us translate this quote

Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson Letter (23 Dec 1790) to Martha Jefferson Randolph. Collected in B.L. Rayner (ed.), Sketches of the Life, Writings, and Opinions of Thomas Jefferson (1832), 192.
Posthumous publications, On botany

“The naturalists, you know, distribute the history of nature into three kingdoms or departments: zoology, botany, mineralogy. Ideology, or mind, however, occupies so much space in the field of science, that we might perhaps erect it into a fourth kingdom or department. But inasmuch as it makes a part of the animal construction only, it would be more proper to subdivide zoology into physical and moral.”

Help us translate this quote

Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson, Letter (24 Mar 1824) to Mr. Woodward. Collected in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence (1854), 339.
Posthumous publications, On botany

“To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of materialism by Locke, Tracy, and Stewart. At what age of the Christian church this heresy of immaterialism, this masked atheism, crept in, I do not know. But heresy it certainly is. […] I am satisfied, and sufficiently occupied with the things which are, without tormenting or troubling myself about those which may indeed be, but of which I have no evidence.”

Help us translate this quote

Thomas Jefferson

Letter http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/jefferson_jadms.html to John Adams (15 August 1820)
1820s

“Considering the general tendency to multiply offices and dependencies and to increase expense to the ultimate term of burden which the citizen can bear, it behooves us to avail ourselves of every occasion which presents itself for taking off the surcharge; that it never may be seen here that, after leaving to labor the smallest portion of its earnings on which it can subsist, Government shall itself consume the whole residue of what it was instituted to guard.”

Help us translate this quote

Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson's First State of the Union Address (8 December 1801)
1800s, First Presidential Administration (1801–1805)

“Everything predicted by the enemies of banks, in the beginning, is now coming to pass. We are to be ruined now by the deluge of bank paper. It is cruel that such revolutions in private fortunes should be at the mercy of avaricious adventurers, who, instead of employing their capital, if any they have, in manufactures, commerce, and other useful pursuits, make it an instrument to burden all the interchanges of property with their swindling profits, profits which are the price of no useful industry of theirs.”

Help us translate this quote

Thomas Jefferson

Letter to Thomas Cooper, 1814. ME 14:61
Posthumous publications, On financial matters

“The government of the United States have no idea of paying their debt in a depreciated medium, and… in the final liquidation of the payments which shall have been made, due regard will be had to an equitable allowance for the circumstance of depreciation.”

Help us translate this quote

Thomas Jefferson

Letter to Jean Baptiste de Ternant, 1791. ME 8:247
Posthumous publications, On financial matters

“They might need a preparatory discourse on the text of 'prove all things, hold fast that which is good,' in order to unlearn the lesson that reason is an unlawful guide in religion. They might startle on being first awaked from the dreams of the night, but they would rub their eyes at once, and look the spectres boldly in the face.”

Help us translate this quote

Thomas Jefferson

Letter to Benjamin Waterhouse (19 July 1822), published in The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes http://oll.libertyfund.org/ToC/0054.php, Federal Edition, Paul Leicester Ford, ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, Vol. 12 http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/Jefferson0136/Works/0054-12_Bk.pdf, p. 244
1820s

“The good old Dominion, the blessed mother of us all.”

Help us translate this quote

Thomas Jefferson

"Thoughts on Lotteries" (1826)
1820s

“I regret that I am now to die in the belief, that the useless sacrifice of themselves by the generation of 1776, to acquire self- government and happiness to their country, is to be thrown away by the unwise and unworthy passions of their sons, and that my only consolation is to be, that I live not to weep over it. If they would but dispassionately weigh the blessings they will throw away, against an abstract principle more likely to be effected by union than by scission, they would pause before they would perpetrate this act of suicide on themselves, and of treason against the hopes of the world. To yourself, as the faithful advocate of the Union, I tender the offering of my high esteem and respect.”

Help us translate this quote

Thomas Jefferson

Letter to John Holmes (22 April 1820)
1820s

“We think in America that it is necessary to introduce the people into every department of government as far as they are capable of exercising it; and that this is the only way to ensure a long-continued and honest administration of it's powers. 1. They are not qualified to exercise themselves the EXECUTIVE department: but they are qualified to name the person who shall exercise it. With us therefore they chuse this officer every 4. years. 2. They are not qualified to LEGISLATE. With us therefore they only chuse the legislators. 3. They are not qualified to JUDGE questions of law; but they are very capable of judging questions of fact. In the form of JURIES therefore they determine all matters of fact, leaving to the permanent judges to decide the law resulting from those facts. Butwe all know that permanent judges acquire an esprit de corps; that, being known, they are liable to be tempted by bribery; that they are misled by favor, by relationship, by a spirit of party, by a devotion to the executive or legislative; that it is better to leave a cause to the decision of cross and pile than to that of a judge biased to one side; and that the opinion of twelve honest jurymen gives still a better hope of right than cross and pile does. It is left therefore, to the juries, if they think the permanent judges are under any bias whatever in any cause, to take on themselves to judge the law as well as the fact. They never exercise this power but when they suspect partiality in the judges; and by the exercise of this power they have been the firmest bulwarks of English liberty.”

Help us translate this quote

Thomas Jefferson

Letter to the Abbé Arnoux (19 July 1787) https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-15-02-0275
1780s

“If a due participation of office is a matter of right, how are vacancies to be obtained? Those by death are few; by resignation, none.”

Help us translate this quote

Thomas Jefferson

Letter to Elias Shipman and others of New Haven (12 July 1801). Often misquoted as, "few die and none resign".
1800s, First Presidential Administration (1801–1805)

“For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well organized and armed militia is their best security.”

Help us translate this quote

Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson's Eighth State of the Union Address (8 November 1808)
1800s, Second Presidential Administration (1805-1809)

“God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. … What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.”

Help us translate this quote

Thomas Jefferson

Letter https://web.archive.org/web/19991115034104/http://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/P/tj3/writings/brf/jefl64.htm to William Stephens Smith (13 November 1787), quoted in Padover's Jefferson On Democracy
1780s

“If a law is unjust, a man is not only right to disobey it, he is obligated to do so.”

Help us translate this quote

Thomas Jefferson

Not attributed to Jefferson until the 21st century. May be a loose paraphrasing of a passage from Declaration of Independence (1776): "But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
Misattributed
Variante: When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.

“I agree with you that it is the duty of every good citizen to use all the opportunities, which occur to him, for preserving documents relating to the history of our country.”

Help us translate this quote

Thomas Jefferson

Letter to Hugh P. Taylor (4 October 1823)
1820s

“It is not by the consolidation or concentration, of powers, but by their distribution that good government is effected.”

Help us translate this quote

Thomas Jefferson

Memoirs, Correspondence and Private Papers of Thomas Jefferson (1829) edited by Thomas Jefferson Randolph, p. 70
Posthumous publications

“The principle of rotation… in the body of [bank] directors… breaks in upon the esprit de corps so apt to prevail in permanent bodies; it gives a chance for the public eye penetrating into the sanctuary of those proceedings and practices, which the avarice of the directors may introduce for their personal emolument, and which the resentments of excluded directors, or the honesty of those duly admitted, might betray to the public; and it gives an opportunity at the end of the year, or at other periods, of correcting a choice, which on trial, proves to have been unfortunate.”

Help us translate this quote

Thomas Jefferson

Letter to Albert Gallatin, 1803. ME 10:437
Posthumous publications, On financial matters

“I believe… that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another.”

Help us translate this quote

Thomas Jefferson

Letter to John Adams (1816)
1810s

“From the nature and purpose of civil institutions, all the lands within the limits which any particular society has circumscribed around itself are assumed by that society, and subject to their allotment only. This may be done by themselves, assembled collectively, or by their legislature, to whom they may have delegated sovereign authority; and if they are alloted in neither of these ways, each individual of the society may appropriate to himself such lands as he finds vacant, and occupancy will give him title.”

Help us translate this quote

Thomas Jefferson

1770s, A Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774)

“When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.”

Help us translate this quote

Thomas Jefferson

First attributed to Jefferson in 1945, this does not appear in any known Jefferson document. When governments fear the people, there is liberty... http://wiki.monticello.org/mediawiki/index.php/When_governments_fear_the_people,_there_is_liberty...(Quotation), Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia. It first appears in 1914, in [Barnhill, John Basil, John Basil Barnhill, Indictment of Socialism No. 3, Barnhill-Tichenor Debate on Socialism, http://debs.indstate.edu/b262b3_1914.pdf, PDF, 2008-10-16, 1914, National Rip-Saw Publishing, Saint Louis, Missouri, p. 34]
Misattributed
Variante: Where the people fear the government you have tyranny. Where the government fears the people you have liberty.