- “It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution.” ~Thomas Jefferson (1781)
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- “To restore … harmony … to render us again one people acting as one nation should be the object of every man really a patriot.” ~Thomas Jefferson (1801)
- “We must make our election between economy and Liberty, or profusion and servitude.” ~Thomas Jefferson (1816)
- “It is of great importance to set a resolution, not to be shaken, never to tell an untruth. There is no vice so mean, so pitiful, so contemptible; and he who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and a third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world’s believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good disposition.” ~Thomas Jefferson (1785)
- “The opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves, in their own sphere of action, but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch.” ~Thomas Jefferson (1804)
- “On every question of construction, 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 invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.” ~Thomas Jefferson explained to Supreme Court Justice William Johnson, June 12, 1823
- “The germ of dissolution of our federal government is in … the federal judiciary … working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped from the States.” ~Thomas Jefferson 1821
- “The Declaration of Independence … [is the] declaratory charter of our rights, and the rights of man.” ~Thomas Jefferson (1819)
- “It has long, however, been my opinion, and I have never shrunk from its expression … that the germ of dissolution of our federal government is in the constitution of the federal Judiciary; working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped.” ~Thomas Jefferson (1821)
