Thomas Jefferson Quotes

Bad government is the natural product of rule by those who believe government is bad.

Despotism is the only form of government which may with safety to itself, neglect the education of its infant poor.

The inquiry constantly is what will please, not what will benefit the people. In such a government there can be nothing but temporary expedient, fickleness, and folly.

President Karzai does not have any idea of what is going on in his country.

I hold them [politicians] in contempt for the reason that they enact laws, further social engineering, do anything to get elected, couldn't care less about the wishes of the people and make horrible mistakes along the way when they do get in office. If there is anyone the most ignorant about issues it is a politician. A plague on all their houses!

We have government by the clueless, over a place they’ve never been, using means they don’t possess.

You have the army of mediocrities followed by the multitude of fools. As the mediocrities and the fools always form the immense majority, it is impossible for them to elect an intelligent government.

However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.

If the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) raises the hackles of the conspiracy theorists, the Bilderberg meetings must induce apocalyptic visions of omnipotent international bankers plotting with unscrupulous government officials to impose cunning schemes on an ignorant and unsuspecting world.

Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large, that they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interests, and when they succeed to the government are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions.

The trade of governing has always been monopolized by the most ignorant and the most rascally individuals of mankind.

He is a weak ruler who needs religion to uphold his government; it is as if he would catch his people in a trap.

There is nothing more dangerous than a government of the many controlled by the few.

We have reached the point where ignorance and neglect are the best we can hope for in a ruler.

I think democracies are prone to inflation because politicians will naturally spend [excessively] - they have the power to print money and will use money to get votes. If you look at inflation under the Roman Empire, with absolute rulers, they had much greater inflation, so we don't set the record. It happens over the long-term under any form of government.

Foreign aid breeds kleptocracies, or governments of thieves.

Dishonesty plus economic ignorance equals California government.

People who know nothing about advertising, nothing about pharmaceuticals, and nothing about economics have been loudly proclaiming that the drug companies spend too much on advertising - and demanding that the government pass laws based on their ignorance.

Negro equality, Fudge!! How long in the Government of a God great enough to make and maintain this Universe, shall there continue to be knaves to vend and fools to gulp, so low a piece of demagoguism as this?

The noble people will be nobly ruled, and the ignorant and corrupt ignobly.

Ignorance allowed politicians to fool people and bad administrators to be re-elected.

The thing that has disturbed me most about the Russian hacking episode is - and the thing that surprised me most has not been the fact of Russian hacking. The cyber world is full of information gathering, you know, propaganda, et cetera. I have been concerned about the degree to which, in some circles, you've seen people suggest that Vladimir Putin has more credibility than the U.S. government. I think that's something new.

The Three Branches of Government: Money, Television, and Bullshit

The great problem of legislation is, so to organize the civil government of a community... that in the operation of human institutions upon social action, self-love and social may be made the same.