Jefferson, Adams and the Declaration of Independence

Thomas Jef­fer­son quotes:

1. “The democ­ra­cy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are will­ing to work and give to those who would not. ” 2. “It is incum­bent on every gen­er­a­tion to pay its own debts as it goes. A prin­ci­ple which if act­ed on would save one-half the wars of the world.”

3. “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.”

4. “My read­ing of his­to­ry con­vinces me that most bad gov­ern­ment results from too much gov­ern­ment.”

5. “No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.”

6. “The strongest rea­son for the peo­ple to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to pro­tect them­selves against tyran­ny in gov­ern­ment.”

7. “The tree of lib­er­ty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patri­ots and tyrants.”

8. “To com­pel a man to sub­si­dize with his tax­es the prop­a­ga­tion of ideas which He dis­be­lieves and abhors is sin­ful and tyran­ni­cal.”

9. “I believe that bank­ing insti­tu­tions are more dan­ger­ous to our lib­er­ties than stand­ing armies. If the Amer­i­can peo­ple ever allow pri­vate banks to con­trol the issue of their cur­ren­cy, first by infla­tion, then by defla­tion, the banks and cor­po­ra­tions that will grow up around the banks will deprive the peo­ple of all prop­er­ty until their chil­dren wake-up home­less on the con­ti­nent their fathers con­quered.”