More Quotes by Thomas Jefferson
A well informed citizenry is the best defense against tyranny.
The federal government is our servant, not our master.
When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty.
The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases.
The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite.
You know well that government always kept a kind of standing army of newswriters who, without any regard to truth or to what should be like truth, invented and put into the papers whatever might serve the [government] ministers. This suffices with the mass of the people who have no means of distinguishing the false from the true paragraphs of a newspaper.
I think myself that we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious. Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have ... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases. The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first.
To consider judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions is a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy.
It is the old practice of despots to use a part of the people to keep the rest in order.
Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends [life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness] it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government.
