[Brucelee]

Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.


Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.


I own that I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.

It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.


My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.

Never spend your money before you have earned it.

Power is not alluring to pure minds.

Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.

That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.

The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.

The moment a person forms a theory, his imagination sees in every object only the traits which favor that theory.

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.

The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.

To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.

We may consider each generation as a distinct nation, with a right, by the will of its majority, to bind themselves, but none to bind the succeeding generation, more than the inhabitants of another country.








Thomas Jefferson