Thomas Jefferson Quotes

The shortest way to ruin a country is to give power to demogogues.

America is just the country that shows how all the written guarantees in the world for freedom are no protection against tyranny and oppression of the worst kind. There the politician has come to be looked upon as the very scum of society.

Mr. Watson belongs to that school of southern Populists who honestly believe that the respectable and commonplace people who own banks, railroads, dry goods stores, factories, and the like, are persons of mental and social attributes that unpleasantly distinguish Heliogabalus, Nero, Caligula, and other worthies of later Rome.... If he got the chance he would lash the nation with a whip of scorpions

As men could not make might obey right, they have made right obey might.

Politicians as a class are dangerous, that people who are seeking power over us are not, by definition, our friends.

I think 'The Wire' is my all-time favorite TV show. It's so brilliant, the way it critiques society, and how it handles that everybody who gets power loses their moral code and stops going to the root of the problem and just tries to maintain their own power.

Power is always a corrupting influence.

And remember, where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get control. History has proven that.

The greater the state, the more wrong and cruel its patriotism, and the greater is the sum of suffering upon which its power is founded.

Tyrants have always some slight shade of virtue; they support the laws before destroying them.

Government by blackmail is incompatible with democracy.

Dictators are allergic to reform, and they are cunning survivors. They will do whatever it takes to preserve their power and wealth, no matter how much blood ends up on their hands. They are master deceivers and talented manipulators who cannot be trusted to change.

Too much liberty corrupts us all.

Power intoxicates men. It is never voluntarily surrendered. It must be taken from them.

Yes, citizens, Iturbide was a traitor, a hypocrite and an impious man who destroyed the assembly in which the people had deposited their sovereignty in order to appropriate it all to himself

Power over men is itself a satisfaction, besides providing opportunity to better one's circumstances with a minimum of exertion. Hence, the lust for power increases with its enjoyment and restraint is added to restraint. The government instituted to prevent men from transgressing one another's equal rights thus tends to become a transgressor of the rights of all. The injustice is far more oppressive than anyone man can do unto another, and the interests of freedom can be served only by restraint of government.

Either force or corruption has been the principle of every modern government.

… the sole end of government is the protection and security of the people; whenever therefore that power which was originally instituted to effect these important and valuable purposes is employed to harass and enslave the people, … it becomes a curse rather than a blessing.

Feelings of marginalization and cries of separation are symptomatic of countries where rulers find power sweet and intoxicating, where power is coveted, and when acquired, painstakingly guarded.

It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes.

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms [of government] those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations perverted it into tyranny.

The whole administrative, judicial, and legislative machinery obeys a single will, the caprice of General Porfirio Diaz, who during his long administration has shown that the principal motive that guides him is to maintain himself in power and at any cost.

In a free government, the few, finding their schemes and views of interest borne down by the many, to gain the power they cannot constitutionally obtain, always endeavor to get it by cunning and corruption, conscious at the same time that usurpation, when once begun, the safety of the usurper consists only in grasping the whole.

The worst government is the most moral.

When the tyranny of the state is combined with the hypocrisy of the church, you have a modern example of the twin vultures that have devoured man, and his rights, throughout the ages.