Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government;... whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.

Source: Thomas Jefferson to Richard Price, 1789. ME 7:253

Topics: Responsibility

We are now trusting to those who are against us in position and principle, to fashion to their own form the minds and affections of our youth... This canker is eating on the vitals of our existence, and if not arrested at once, will be beyond remedy.

Source: Thomas Jefferson to James Breckinridge, 1821. ME 15:315

Topics: Education

I feel... an ardent desire to see knowledge so disseminated through the mass of mankind that it may, at length, reach even the extremes of society: beggars and kings.

Source: Thomas Jefferson: Reply to American Philosophical Society, 1808.

Topics: Education

Freedom of religion, freedom of the press, trial by jury, habeas corpus, and a representative legislature... I consider as the essentials constituting free government, and... the organization of the executive is interesting as it may insure wisdom and integrity in the first place, but next as it may favor or endanger the preservation of these fundamentals.

Source: Thomas Jefferson to Pierre Samuel Dupont de Nemours, 1815. ME 14:255

Topics: Government, Limited

I did not think the public offices confided to me to give away as charities.

Source: Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, 1802. ME 10:332

Topics: Politics

I have ever cherished the same spirit with all nations, from a consciousness that peace, prosperity, liberty and morals have an intimate connection.

Source: Thomas Jefferson to George Logan, 1813. ME 13:384

Topics: Morality; Peace

Nothing is so important as that America shall separate herself from the systems of Europe, and establish one of her own. Our circumstances, our pursuits, our interests, are distinct. The principles of our policy should be so also. All entanglements with that quarter of the globe should be avoided if we mean that peace and justice shall be the polar stars of the American societies.

Source: Thomas Jefferson to J. Correa de Serra, 1820. ME 15:285

Topics: Politics, International

Our first and fundamental maxim should be never to entangle ourselves in the broils of Europe. Our second, never to suffer Europe to intermeddle with cis-Atlantic affairs. America, North and South, has a set of interests distinct from those of Europe and peculiarly her own. She should therefore have a system of her own, separate and apart from that of Europe. While the last is laboring to become the domicile of despotism, our endeavor should surely be to make our hemisphere that of freedom.

Source: Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, 1823. ME 15:477

Topics: Politics, International

The assassination of President Kennedy, the daily slaughter of our boys in Vietnam, the communist control of the Berkeley riots and communist-inspired demonstrations from coast to coast should serve as a shock therapy to that segment of our population who like to call themselves “liberals.” America is big enough to make room for many different kinds of thinking, but many liberals have claimed to see virtues in socialism and communism which I, for one, have not been able to find. To promote their ideas, American liberals have become a highly organized, hard-core establishment in the United States, and they have been excusing their appeasement and coddling of communism on the ground that they were being “tolerant,” “broadminded,” and “working for peace.”

Source: Ezra Taft Benson
An Enemy Hath Done This, Ch. 3, p.32

Topics: Liberals; Socialism; Tolerance

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