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
Thomas Jefferson:
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citations
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Thomas Jefferson Citations
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
Thomas Jefferson: Citations en anglais
“The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground.”
Letter to Edward Carrington, Paris (27 May 1788) PTJ, 13:208-9 http://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/natural-progress-things-quotation
1780s
Source: Letters of Thomas Jefferson
Letter to James Madison (30 January 1787); referring to Shays' Rebellion Lipscomb & Bergh ed. 6:65
1780s
Letter to Éleuthère Irénée du Pont de Nemours (24 April 1816)
1810s
to George Logan, 1816 http://memory.loc.gov/master/mss/mtj/mtj1/049/0600/0642.jpgLetter
Posthumous publications, On financial matters
Source: The Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Retirement Series, Volume 10: 1 May 1816 to 18 January 1817
1780s, Letter to Peter Carr (1785)
“If you want something you have never had, you must be willing to do something you have never done.”
Not found in Jefferson's writings, according to the Jefferson Monticello center https://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/if-you-want-something-you-have-never-had-quotation. First known appearance in print is from 2004.
Misattributed
1800s, First Inaugural Address (1801)
Source: The Inaugural Speeches and Messages of Thomas Jefferson, Esq.: Late President of the United States: Together with the Inaugural Speech of James Madison, Esq. ...
1810s
Source: Selected Writings
Contexte: It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance. By an universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally and in common, is the property for the moment of him who occupies it, but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
Letter to Isaac McPherson http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12.html (13 August 1813) ME 13:333.
The sentence He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. is sometimes paraphrased as "Knowledge is like a candle. Even as it lights a new candle, the strength of the original flame is not diminished."
“Those who expect to be both ignorant and free, expect what never was and never will be.”
Variante: If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.
“Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto.”
Letter to Thomas Lomax (12 March 1799) http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16783/16783-h/16783-h.htm#2H_4_0253|
1790s
Letter to Elbridge Gerry http://www.constitution.org/tj/jeff10.txt (26 January 1799); published in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Memorial Edition <!-- (ME) (Lipscomb and Bergh, editors) --> 20 Vols., Washington, D.C., 1903-04, Volume 10, p. 78
1790s
Contexte: I am for freedom of religion, & against all maneuvres to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another, for freedom of the press, and against all violations of the Constitution to silence by force and not by reason the complaints or criticisms, just or unjust, of our citizens against the conduct of their agents.
“Good wine is a necessity of life for me.”
As quoted in The Man from Monticello : An Intimate Life of Thomas Jefferson (1969) by Thomas J. Fleming, p. 250
Posthumous publications
