Jim > Jim's Quotes

“A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.”
― Gerald R. Ford

“I predict future happiness for Americans, if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“I sincerely believe 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

“On matters of style, swim with the current, on matters of principle, stand like a rock.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.”
― John Stuart Mill, Inaugural Address Delivered to the University of St Andrews, 2/1/1867

“I'm a greater believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“We in America do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“History, in general, only informs us what bad government is.”
― Thomas Jefferson, Letters of Thomas Jefferson

“Some are whigs, liberals, democrats, call them what you please. Others are tories, serviles, aristocrats, &c. The latter fear the people, and wish to transfer all power to the higher classes of society; the former consider the people as the safest depository of power in the last resort; they cherish them therefore, and wish to leave in them all the powers to the exercise of which they are competent.”
― Thomas Jefferson, Letters of Thomas Jefferson

“And to preserve their independence, 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 debts, 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 callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses; and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes; have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account; but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers.”
― Thomas Jefferson, Letters of Thomas Jefferson

“Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions any more than our opinions in physics or geometry...”
― Thomas Jefferson, Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom

“In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is Freedom, in water there is bacteria.”
― Benjamin Franklin

“It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority.”
― Benjamin Franklin

“Occasionally he stumbled over the truth, but hastily picked himself up and hurried on as if nothing had happened.”
― Winston Churchill

“Lost time is never found again.”
― Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack

“In the Affairs of this World Men are saved, not by Faith,
but by the Lack of it.”
― Ben Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanack

“Life biggest tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late”
― Benjamin Franklin

“Anger is never without a reason, but seldom with a good one”
― Benjamin Franklin

“Thinking aloud is a habit which is responsible for most of mankind's misery.”
― Benjamin Franklin

“We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid.”
― Benjamin Franklin

“The Constitution only guarantees the American people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.”
― Benjamin Franklin

“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

“...never [enter] into dispute or argument with another. I never saw an instance of one of two disputants convincing the other by argument. I have seen many, on their getting warm, becoming rude, & shooting one another. ... When I hear another express an opinion which is not mine, I say to myself, he has a right to his opinion, as I to mine; why should I question it? His error does me no injury, and shall I become a Don Quixote, to bring all men by force of argument to one opinion? ... There are two classes of disputants most frequently to be met with among us. The first is of young students, just entered the threshold of science, with a first view of its outlines, not yet filled up with the details & modifications which a further progress would bring to their knoledge. The other consists of the ill-tempered & rude men in society, who have taken up a passion for politics. ... Consider yourself, when with them, as among the patients of Bedlam, needing medical more than moral counsel. Be a listener only, keep within yourself, and endeavor to establish with yourself the habit of silence, especially on politics. In the fevered state of our country, no good can ever result from any attempt to set one of these fiery zealots to rights, either in fact or principle. They are determined as to the facts they will believe, and the opinions on which they will act. Get by them, therefore, as you would by an angry bull; it is not for a man of sense to dispute the road with such an animal.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“Resolved ... that it would be a dangerous delusion were a confidence in the men of our choice to silence our fears for the safety of our rights: that confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism — free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence;”
― Thomas Jefferson, The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 and '99: With Jefferson's Original Draught Thereof.

“If, therefore, from the settlement of the Saxons, to the introduction of Christianity among them, that system of religion could not be a part of the common law, because they were not yet Christians; and if, having their laws from that period to the close of the common law, we are able to find among them no such act of adoption; we may safely affirm (though contradicted by all the judges and writers on earth) that Christianity neither is, nor ever was, a part of the common law.

['Whether Christianity is Part of the Common Law?', letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, from Monticello, February 10, 1814]”
― Thomas Jefferson, Letters of Thomas Jefferson

“There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.”
― James Madison

“The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted.”
― James Madison

“It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.”
― James Madison

“Those who are to conduct a war cannot in the nature of things, be proper or safe judges, whether a war ought to be commenced, continued, or concluded. Thy are barred from the latter functions by a great principle in free government, analogous to that which separates the sword from the purse, or the power of executing from the power of enacting laws.”
― James Madison, The Pacificus-Helvidius Debates of 1793-94: Toward the Completion of the American Founding

“Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.”
― James Madison