More Quotes by Thomas Jefferson
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.
Evil triumphs when good men do nothing.
The Bible makes the best people in the world.
It is the old practice of despots to use a part of the people to keep the rest in order.
Free men do not ask permission to bear arms
The press is impotent when it abandons itself to falsehood.
When once a Republic is corrupted, there is no possibility of remedying any of the growing evils but by removing the corruption and restoring its lost principles; every other correction is either useless or a new evil.
There is no justification for taking away individuals' freedom in the guise of public safety.
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.
When the people are afraid of the government, that's tyranny. But when the government is afraid of the people, that's liberty.
