Letter to John Wayles Eppes (9 September 1814). 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. 11 http://files.libertyfund.org/files/807/0054-11_Bk.pdf, pp. 425-426
1810s
Context: [... ] Congress itself can punish Alexandria, by repealing the law which made it a town, by discontinuing it as a port of entry or clearance, and perhaps by suppressing it’s banks. But I expect all will go off with impunity. If our government ever fails, it will be from this weakness. No government can be maintained without the principle of fear as well as of duty. Good men will obey the last, but bad ones the former only.
Political Register, XLVI, pp. 513-514 (31 May 1823).
“Once again prosperous and successful crime goes by the name of virtue; good men obey the bad, might is right and fear oppresses law.”
rursus prosperum ac felix scelus virtus vocatur; sontibus parent boni, ius est in armis, opprimit leges timor.
Hercules Furens (The Madness of Hercules), lines 251-253; (Amphitryon)
Alternate translation: Successful and fortunate crime is called virtue. (translator unknown)
Alternate translation: Might makes right. (translator unknown).
Tragedies
Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph, “Unlimited Government” (Dec. 29, 1961).
Source: The Most Beautiful Woman in Town & Other Stories
Frame of Government (1682)
Context: Governments, like clocks, go from the motion men give them; and as governments are made and moved by men, so by them they are ruined too. Wherefore governments rather depend upon men, than men upon governments. Let men be good, and the government cannot be bad; if it be ill, they will cure it. But, if men be bad, let the government be never so good, they will endeavor to warp and spoil it to their turn.
“Share the Profits with Labor” speech (Dec. 2, 1934) p. 52
A Series of Lectures on Social Justice, 1935
“My duty is, as a Judge, to be governed by fixed rules and former precedents.”
Brownlow v. Egerton (1854), 23 L. J. Rep. Part 5 (N. S.), Ch. 364.
Encyclical Fides et Ratio, 14 September 1998
Source: www.vatican.va http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_14091998_fides-et-ratio_en.html
“Obey the principles without being bound by them.”
