Thomas Jefferson Quotes

The rights to life, liberty and property were not meant to be subject to the vagaries of majority rule.

Establish democracy ... based on human rights as superior to property rights.

People have rights and government must be kept from trampling on them.

A free people claim their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.

If, then, we truly believe in the liberty of conscience, speech and press, we must place ourselves again squarely upon the declaration of rights made by our forefathers, and defend the right of others to disagree with us, even about the beneficence of government

The Constitution is not about restricting the people; it is about restricting the government.

My grandfather wanted to remind us that freedom of expression is the fundamental ingredient for democracy, and all the rest is detail. It is the scaffolding around which every other freedom is based.

If it is not totalitarian to arrest a man and detain him, when you cannot charge him with any offence against any written law – if that is not what we have always cried out against in Fascist states – then what is it?… If we are to survive as a free democracy, then we must be prepared, in principle, to concede to our enemies – even those who do not subscribe to our views – as much constitutional rights as you concede yourself.

We must never cease to proclaim in fearless tones the great principles of freedom and the rights of man which are the joint inheritance of the English-speaking world and which through Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights, the Habeas Corpus, trial by jury, and the English common law find their most famous expression in the American Declaration of Independence.

Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism, are all too frequently those who . . . ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism-the right to criticize, the right to hold unpopular beliefs, the right to protest, the right of independent thought.

Being democratic is not enough, a majority cannot turn what is wrong into right. In order to be considered truly free, countries must also have a deep love of liberty and an abiding respect for the rule of law.

I do think that our freedoms are at risk.

The Democratic Party will never desert the freedoms of our people under the guise of pretending to protect them.

The Constitution gives every American the inalienable right to make a damn fool of himself.

The ultimate good in a liberal state is liberty.

We must have constantly present in our minds the difference between independence and liberty. Liberty is a right of doing whatever the laws permit, and if a citizen could do what they forbid he would no longer be possessed of liberty.

It was once a fundamental maxim that every subject had the same right to his life, liberty, property, and the law that the King had to his crown; and 'tis yet, I venture to say, as much as a crown is worth, to deny the subject his law, which is his birthright.

The Constitution is a delusion and a snare if the weakest and humblest man in the land cannot be defended in his right to speak and his right to think as much as the strongest in the land.

Do we leave our rights to the hopeful wisdom of the courts or to the elusive whim of the masses?

It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights ... at the school house door.

Nothing... is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man.

Our founding fathers undertook to create a country based on a notion of individual liberty because they were fleeing from countries in Europe where the government held too much power. They would look at what's happening today in John Ashcroft's Justice Department and say, 'Where have we gone wrong?'

All of our freedoms – All of the time.

In a Constitution for a free people, there can be no doubt that the meaning of ‘liberty’ must be broad indeed.

No doubt that a great deal of nonsense has been written about the “unalienable rights of individuals.”