The Forsight and Wisedom of Thomas Jefferson

"We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debt, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our calling and our creeds...[we will] have no time to think, no means of calling our miss-managers to account but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers... And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for[ another]... till the bulk of society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery... And the fore-horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression" -Thomas Jefferson

"For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well organized and armed militia is their best security" -Thomas Jefferson

"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law,' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual" -Thomas Jefferson

"Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle" -Thomas Jefferson

"The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first" -Thomas Jefferson

"The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite" -Thomas Jefferson

"And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale" -thomas jefferson

"I, however, place economy among the first and most important republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared" -Thomas Jefferson

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be" -Thomas Jefferson

"What country before ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." -Thomas Jefferson

"When the government fears the people there is liberty; when the people fear the government there is tyranny" -Thomas Jefferson

"[The] Bank of the United States... is one of the most deadly hostility existing, against the principles and form of our Constitution... An institution like this, penetrating by its branches every part of the Union, acting by command and in phalanx, may, in a critical moment, upset the government. I deem no government safe which is under the vassalage of any self-constituted authorities, or any other authority than that of the nation, or its regular functionaries. What an obstruction could not this bank of the United States, with all its branch banks, be in time of war! It might dictate to us the peace we should accept, or withdraw its aids. Ought we then to give further growth to an institution so powerful, so hostile?" -Thomas Jefferson
(NOTE: the current financial regulation bill in the senate will do just that, gives even more power to the federal reserve)

"My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government. That government is best which governs least" -Thomas Jefferson

"When the representative body have lost the confidence of their constituents, when they have notoriously made sale of their most valuable rights, when they have assumed to themselves powers which the people never put into their hands, then indeed their continuing in office becomes dangerous to the State, and calls for an exercise of the power of dissolution." -Thomas Jefferson

"Fear can only prevail when victims are ignorant of the facts" -Thomas Jefferson

"But with respect to future debt; would it not be wise and just for that nation to declare in the constitution they are forming that neither the legislature, nor the nation itself can validly contract more debt, than they may pay within their own age, or within the term of 19 years" -Thomas Jefferson

"If any state in the Union will declare that it prefers separation... to a continuance in union... I have no hesitation in saying, 'let us separate.'" -Thomas Jefferson

"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them (around the banks), will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered" -Thomas Jefferson

"The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; in as much as he who knows nothing is nearer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors" -Thomas Jefferson

"No free man shall ever be de-barred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain their right to keep and bear arms is as a last resort to protect themselves against tyranny in government" -Thomas Jefferson

Just because its 2010 doesn't make these words no less truthful or powerful. Of course thats not what TPTB would want you to think. people have forgotten the foundations our forefathers built this country on and the principles they held so dearly. DO THESE WORDS NOT RADIATE TRUTH? DO THEY NOT HAVE RESONANCE IN 2010 AMERICA? Our forefathers warned us... and we have let them down to this point...

[edit on 9-4-2010 by TheCoffinman]

Great quotes!

I always find it interesting that, when people look at Jefferson's views on debt and taxation, they tend to overlook that one of the ways Jefferson (and his Secretary of Treasury, Gallatin) wanted to keep spending as low as possible was by spending as little as humanly possible on the military. Jefferson, as Henry Adams recounts in great detail in his History of the United States (still the best and most detailed history ever written of the John Adams/Jefferson era), believed that the surest route to international power and prestige was by running trading surpluses. In essence, he wanted to let the markets dictate foreign policy. In all the talk of cutting government spending (to which I say "Amen") there is seldom a word about restructuring and cutting military expenditures.

It's been both beautiful and sad to watch, since the end of World War II, how the military has made people forget the Military in Military-Industrial Complex.

reply to post by TheCoffinman


good lord that first quote is so money.



[edit on 10-4-2010 by mnemeth1]

Hear hear!
I think my heart swelled a little within my breast just reading those words...
Where are the Jefferson's of this Day and Age to guide us with wisdom??
And would we heed their advice anyway, if they were speaking from the very rooftops of our "Civilisation"?

The sad thing is people back then needed arms to protect themselves and fight against the government. There were no such things as lasers or what have you. The government had what the people had, technologicaly speaking. The people now do not have tanks in their backyard, possilbe mind control techniques, etc. When I look in this perspective, I can't help but think there is no beating the govnerment and retaking our rights to liberty that every human being is born with. We cannot simply take them by force. Times are different... it is time for a new era of revolution.

These quotes ring true with a resonance so strong that it wouldn't be a stretch to believe that Thomas Jefferson could indeed foresee the future himself. He was so well studied in his history and methods that he could foresee just about every obstacle that we, as the people of the United States, would allow to get into our way of freedom.

However, there are those in the world that would belittle this man as well as the other Founding Fathers, and disregard their words as "ancient history" and meaningless. There are even people here on ATS who would choose to write their own translations to the Constitution and Declaration of Independence, claiming to hold precedence over those who have created the document in the first place. They would choose to disregard the words of those who drafted and ratified the documents that should have and very well could provide us with the freedom we need.

Look at these quotes. Can anyone honestly say that the freedom that our Founding Fathers spoke and fought for is alive and well today? How could you? We are trapped in a sea of debt, unpayable for the rest of our lives - we are forced into labor and taxation that we do not even understand nor give permission of - we are forced into wars in the name of expanding our empire around the world - we are limiting freedoms and violating the Constitution each and every day with the laws in which the federal government supersedes the power allotted to it.

And yet there are STILL people out there that would believe that government should have all the power - that we as individuals are incapable of handling ourselves. Perhaps YOU are incapable of handling ourselves, but at least I know - as the Founding Fathers of this country knew - as all the men who fought for their independence knew - that we are MORE than capable of handling and governing ourselves and we are more than capable of encasing freedom into our grasps.





Thomas Jefferson, above all others - is my biggest hero and my idol. He spoke out of wit, our of courage, out of experience, and out of intelligence. If you will not heed his warnings that he issued forth oh so long ago- the who'd warning will you heed? Will you ever make a stand for your rights or will you continue believing in a broken system that has entrapped us within it's bounds?




This is why I know that revolution IS necessary and it will happen. I refuse to stand by and watch America die, ignoring the warnings of its founders from over two centuries ago - warnings that have sat with us for all this time yet we have ignored. I will not watch as America tries to rewrite the history books or try to erase these men from our past. What I will do is I will take their advice. I will follow their ideals. I will live in their idea of FREEDOM because God knows that too many people have forgotten what that word actually means.


S&F and hopefully the words of a great man will open the minds of some others.