Quote

Confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism. Free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence.

Thomas Jefferson

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Thomas Jefferson
Age: 83 †
Born: 1743
Born: April 2
Died: 1826
Died: July 4
3Rd U.S. President
Archaeologist
Architect
Cryptographer
Diplomat
Farmer
Inventor
Jurist
Lawyer
Philosopher
Politician
Slaveholder
President Jefferson
T. Jefferson
Government
Founded
Jealousy
Libertarian
Everywhere
Confidence
Constitution
Parent
Free
Despotism

More quotes by Thomas Jefferson

Image
[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
Image
I find that he is happiest of whom the world says least, good or bad.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
I shall often go wrong through defect of judgment. When right, I shall often be thought wrong by those whose positions will not command a view of the whole ground. I ask your indulgence for my own errors, which will never be intentional, and your support against the errors of others, who may condemn what they would not if seen in all its parts.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Our liberty depends on freedom of the press.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Many of the opposition [to the new Federal Constitution] wish to take from Congress the power of internal taxation. Calculation has convinced me that this would be very mischievous.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
From forty years' experience of the wretched guess-work of the newspapers of what is not done in open daylight, and of their falsehood even as to that, I rarely think them worth reading, and almost never worth notice.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
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.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
If some period be not fixed, either by the Constitution or by practice, to the services of the First Magistrate, his office, though nominally elective, will, in fact, be for life, and that will soon degenerate into an inheritance.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
I have no ambition to govern men it is a painful and thankless office.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Honesty and interest are as intimately connected in the public as in the private code of morality.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
I look to the diffusion of light and education as the resource most to be relied on for ameliorating the condition, promoting the virtue and advancing the happiness of man.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Let those flatter, who fear: it is not an American art. To give praise where it is not due, might be well from the venal, but would ill beseem those who are asserting the rights of human nature.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Never fear the want of business. A man who qualifies himself well for his calling, never fails of employment.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
The superiority of chocolate (hot chocolate), both for health and nourishment, will soon give it the same preference over tea and coffee in America which it has in Spain.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
The President is bound to stop at the limits prescribed by our Constitution and law to the authorities in his hands, [and this] would apply in an occasion of peace as well as war.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Planting is one of my great amusements, and even of those things which can only be for posterity, for a Septuagenary has no right to count on any thing but annuals.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which 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.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
I consider ethics, as well as religion, as supplements to law in the government of man.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
All things here appear to me to trudge on in one and the same round: we rise in the morning that we may eat breakfast, dinner andsupper and to bed again that we may get up the next morning and do the same: so that you never saw two peas more alike than our yesterday and to-day.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
I was much an enemy to monarchies before I came to Europe. I am ten thousand times more so, since I have seen what they are. There is scarcely an evil known in these countries, which may not be traced to their king, as its source, nor a good, which is not derived from the small fibres of republicanism existing among them.
Thomas Jefferson