Thomas Jefferson Quotes About Citizenship

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  I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and Constitutions. But laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Change, Peace, Boys

  Thomas Jefferson (1997). “Thomas Jefferson, His Words and Vision”, p.18, Peter Pauper Press, Inc.

• The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Art, Honesty, Government

  Thomas Jefferson (1853). “The writings of Thomas Jefferson: being his autobiography, correspondence, reports, messages, addresses, and other writings, official and private”, p.141

• Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Peace, War, House

  Thomas Jefferson, Brett F. Woods (2009). “Thomas Jefferson: Thoughts on War and Revolution”, p.257, Algora Publishing

• It is strangely absurd to suppose that a million of human beings, collected together, are not under the same moral laws which bind each of them separately.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Rights, Law, Together

  Thomas Jefferson (2010). “The Works of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence and Papers, 1816-1826”, p.43, Cosimo, Inc.

• A nation, as a society, forms a moral person, and every member of it is personally responsible for his society.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Integrity, Responsibility, Hypocrisy

  Thomas Jefferson (2004). “Light and Liberty: Reflections on the Pursuit of Happiness”, p.66, Modern Library

• It is comfortable to see the standard of reason at length erected, after so many ages, during which the human mind has been held in vassalage by kings, priests, and nobles; and it is honorable for us to have produced the first legislature who had the courage to declare that the reason of man may be trusted with the formation of his own opinions.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Kings, Men, Independence

  Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson (1988). “Paine and Jefferson on Liberty”, p.88, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

• In the constitution of Spain as proposed by the late Cortes, there was a principle entirely new to me:... that no person born after that day should ever acquire the rights of citizenship until he could read and write. It is impossible sufficiently to estimate the wisdom of this provision. Of all those which have been thought of for securing fidelity in the administration of the government, constant reliance to the principles of the constitution, and progressive amendments with the progressive advances of the human mind or changes in human affairs, it is the most effectual.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Writing, Rights, Government

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