Thomas Jefferson Quotes

A world is supported by four things: the learning of wise, the justice of great, the prayers of the righteous and the valor of the brave. But all of these are as nothing without a ruler who knows the art of ruling.

The difference between a democracy and other forms of government is not that in a democracy bad things do not happen. The difference is that in a democracy something will be done about it and someone will be held to account.

The people are certainly the best judges whether they are well governed.

Good government is an empire of laws.

Happy are you, O land, when your king is a free man.

Government is not the enemy. Government is simply a tool that can be used wisely or unwisely.

The government of England is one of the wisest in Europe, because there is a body there that examines this government continually and that continually examines itself.

Good government can be no substitute for self-government.

To have good government, you often need less, not more, democracy.

If you believe in democracy, the overreach of leaders is a good reminder that vigorous public debate and time-consuming due process are not only more fair and more just, but that over the long term they usually produce better government, too.

The Founding Fathers of our nation believed in the people. They created a new nation based on the radical notion that the people could be free and trusted - that the nation would be great if you trusted the people to be good.

Democracy is a universal value

Democracy is based on the conviction that man has the moral and intellectual capacity, as well as the inalienable right, to govern himself with reason and justice.

Good government could never be a substitute for government by the people themselves.

A wise Government seeks to provide the opportunity through which the best of individual achievement can be obtained, while at the same time it seeks to remove such obstruction, such unfairness as springs from selfish human motives.

Democracy, if it is reasonable, limits itself to giving everyone an equal opportunity to compete and to obtain.

Unlike any other nation, here the people rule, and their will is the supreme law. It is sometimes sneeringly said by those who do not like free government, that here we count heads. True, heads are counted, but brains also . . .

No good government can ever want more than two things for its support: 1st, Its own excellence; and, 2dly, a people sufficiently instructed, to be aware of that excellence. Every other pretended support, must ultimately tend to its subversion, by lessening its dependence upon these.

Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it.

WASHINGTONIAN, n. A Potomac tribesman who exchanged the privilege of governing himself for the advantage of good government. In justice to him it should be said that he did not want to.

One of the central assumptions of the concept of democracy, perhaps its most central assumption, is that by and large human beings are better judges of their own interests.... The operating maxim of the democratic ideology is, "Whoever wears the shoe knows best where it pinches.

To this day, America is still the abiding alternative to tyranny. This is our purpose in the world, nothing more and nothing less.

He who would save liberty must put his trust in democracy.

Tis not in battles that from youth we train The Governor who must be wise and good, And temper with the sternness of the brain Thoughts motherly, and meek as womanhood.