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jeffers2.txt
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Thomas Jefferson:
Being one of the Founding Fathers of the United States and among the first
Americans to have to defend the newly won liberties of Americans from
encroachment makes Thomas Jefferson one of the most qualified people to ask
about politics and many other issues.
source: http://www.mit.edu:8001/activities/libertarians/ask-thomas-jefferson/jefferson.html
Jefferson's quotations:
The purpose of government:
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 felicity. ---First Inaugural Addres.
The best kind of government:
That government is best which governs the least, because its
people discipline themselves.
Rebellion:
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain
occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive. -- Letter to
Abigail Adams, Paris, Feb. 22, 1787
Freedom of thought:
The care of every man's soul belongs to himself. But what if he
neglect the care of it? Well what if he neglect the care of his
health or his estate, which would more nearly relate to the
state. Will the magistrate make a law that he not be poor or
sick? Laws provide against injury from others; but not from
ourselves. God himself will not save men against their wills.
It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods
or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
Political parties:
I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of
any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in
politics or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking for
myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and
moral agent. If I could not go to Heaven but with a party, I
would not go there at all. -- Letter To Francis Hopkinson, Paris
Mar. 13, 1789
Divine guidance from Washington:
If we were directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap,
we would soon want for bread.
Tyranny:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the
pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments
are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the
consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government
becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People
to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government,
laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its
powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect
their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that
Governments long established should not be changed for light and
transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that
mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable,
than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they
are accustomed. 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. -- Declaration of Independence
Constitutional interpretation:
On every question of construction [of the Constitution] let us
carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was
adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and
instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text,
or intended against it, conform to the probable one in which it
was passed. -- Letter To Justice William Johnson, Monticello,
June 12, 1823
Gun control:
No free man shall ever be de-barred the use of arms. The
strongest reason for the people to retain their right to keep and
bear arms is as a last resort to protect themselves against
tyranny in government.
Lust:
We rarely repent of having eaten too little.
Fiscal policy:
I place economy among the first and important virtues, and public
debt as the greatest of dangers. To preserve our independence, we
must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make
our choice between economy and liberty, or profusion and
servitude. If we can prevent the government from wasting the
labours of the people under the pretense of caring for them, they
will be happy.
Voting:
...a jealous care of the right of election by the people -- a
mild and safe corrective of abuses which are lopped by the sword
of revolution where peaceable remedies are unprovided... -- First
Inaugural Addres
Activism:
Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of
body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.
-- Letter to P. S. Dupont de Nemours, Poplar Forest, April 24,
1816
What price freedom:
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the
blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it's natural manure. --
Letter to William S. Smith, Paris, Nov. 13, 1787