Thomas Jefferson Quotes
No government can be maintained without the principle of fear as well as duty. Good men will obey the last, but bad ones the former only. If our government ever fails, it will be from this weakness.
Jefferson, Thomas. "Letter to John Wayles Eppes, 9 September 1814." The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Retirement Series, edited by J. Jefferson Looney, vol. 7, Princeton University Press, 2010, p. 642.
The term “magistrates” refers to chief executives such as Governors, Mayors, Kings, etc. and not members of a judicial branch per se. For example the President of the United States is sometimes referred to as the Chief Magistrate of the Nation.”
Catherine II—the Great—appointed a commission to suggest model laws for Russia based on some of the principles of the European Enlightenment. The laws were never officially adopted but they are interesting in that they were the product of “liberal” thinking at the time.
Thomas Jefferson was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. He had previously served as the second vice president of the United States under John Adams between 1797 and 1801. The principal author of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson was a proponent of democracy, republicanism, and individual rights, motivating American colonists to break from the Kingdom of Great Britain and form a new nation; he produced formative documents and decisions at both the state and national levels.
