Thomas Jefferson Quotes About Office

• Our legislators are not sufficiently apprized of the rightful limits of their power; that their true office is to declare and enforce only our natural rights and duties, and to take none of them from us.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Rights, Office, Liberty

  Thomas Jefferson, Henry Augustine Washington (1854). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence, cont”, p.3

• [T]he States can best govern our home concerns and the general government our foreign ones. I wish, therefore . . . never to see all offices transferred to Washington, where, further withdrawn from the eyes of the people, they may more secretly be bought and sold at market.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Eye, Home, Government

• The multiplication of public offices, increase of expense beyond income, growth and entailment of a public debt are indications soliciting the employment of the pruning knife.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Knives, Government Debt, Office

  Thomas Jefferson (1855). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence. Reports and opinions while secretary of state”, p.212

• 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

  Thomas Jefferson

  Freedom, Rights, Hands

  Thomas Jefferson, H. A. Washington (2011). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and Private”, p.137, Cambridge University Press

• Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Eye, Men, Office

  Thomas Jefferson (2004). “Light and Liberty: Reflections on the Pursuit of Happiness”, p.25, Modern Library

• I have no ambition to govern men; it is a painful and thankless office.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Pain, Ambition, Men

  Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoirs, correspondence and private papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. by T.J. Randolph”, p.345

• The suppression of unnecessary offices, of useless establishments and expenses enabled us to discontinue our internal taxes. These covering our land with officers, and opening our doors to their intrusions, had already begun that process of domiciliary vexation which, once entered, is scarcely to be restrained from reaching successively every article of produce and property.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Doors, Land, Office

  Thomas Jefferson, Richard Holland Johnston, Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association of the United States “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson”

• I apprehend... that the total abandonment of the principle of rotation in the offices of President and Senator will end in abuse.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Office, Political, Abuse

  Thomas Jefferson, Jerry Holmes (2002). “Thomas Jefferson: A Chronology of His Thoughts”, p.101, Rowman & Littlefield

• Were parties here divided merely by a greediness for office,...to take a part with either would be unworthy of a reasonable or moral man.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Party, Men, Office

  Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoirs, correspondence and private papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. by T.J. Randolph”, p.325

• My reason for fixing them in office for a term of years, rather than for life, was that they might have an idea that they were at a certain period to return into the mass of the people and become the governed instead of the governors which might still keep alive that regard to the public good that otherwise they might perhaps be induced by their independence to forget.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Years, Ideas, People

  Thomas Jefferson (1977). “The Portable Thomas Jefferson”, p.277, Penguin

• Whiskey claims to itself alone the exclusive office of sot-making.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Office, Whiskey, Claims

  Thomas Jefferson, Henry Augustine Washington (1854). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence, cont”, p.285

• In America, no other distinction between man and man had ever been known but that of persons in office exercising powers by authority of the laws, and private individuals. Among these last, the poorest laborer stood on equal ground with the wealthiest millionaire, and generally on a more favored one whenever their rights seem to jar.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Exercise, Men, Rights

  Thomas Jefferson (2004). “Light and Liberty: Reflections on the Pursuit of Happiness”, p.40, Modern Library

• Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of a Censor - over each other.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Life, Differences, Office

  Thomas Jefferson, Jean M. Yarbrough (1963). “The Essential Jefferson”, p.128, Hackett Publishing

• The office of reformer of the superstitions of a nation is ever dangerous.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Faith Religion, Office, Superstitions

  Thomas Jefferson (1854). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence, contin. Reports and opinions while Secretary of State”, p.167

• The foundation on which (our government is) built is the natural equality of man, the denial of every pre-eminence but that annexed to legal office, and particularly the denial of a pre-eminence by birth.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Men, Office, Foundation

• He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

  Thomas Jefferson

  People, Office, Substance

  Declaration of Independence (1776)

• If some period be not fixed, either by the Constitution or by practice, to the services of the First Magistrate, his office, though nominally elective, will, in fact, be for life, and that will soon degenerate into an inheritance.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Life, Practice, Office

  Thomas Jefferson (1854). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson”, p.89

• In a virtuous government, and more especially in times like these, public offices are what they should be - burdens to those appointed to them which it would be wrong to decline, though foreseen to bring them intense labor and great private loss.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Loss, Government, Times Like These

  Thomas Jefferson (2004). “Light and Liberty: Reflections on the Pursuit of Happiness”, p.44, Modern Library

• I hope we shall prove how much happier for man the Quaker policy is, and that the life of the feeder is better than that of the fighter; and it is some consolation that the desolation by these maniacs of one part of the earth is the means of improving it in other parts. Let the latter be our office, and let us milk the cow, while the Russian holds her by the horns, and the Turk by the tail.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Mean, Men, Office

  Thomas Jefferson, Henry Augustine Washington (1854). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence, cont”, p.245

• I leave to others the sublime delights of riding in the storm, better pleased with sound sleep & a warmer berth below it encircled, with the society of neighbors, friends & fellow laborers of the earth rather than with spies & sycophants ... I have no ambition to govern men. It is a painful and thankless office.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Ambition, Sleep, Men

  Thomas Jefferson, Saul Kussiel Padover (1956). “A Jefferson profile as revealed in his letters”

• The proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Religious, Office, Atheism

  Thomas Jefferson, Richard Holland Johnston, Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association of the United States “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson”

• No man will ever bring out of that office the reputation which carries him into it. The honeymoon would be as short in that case as in any other, and its moments of ecstasy would be ransomed by years of torment and hatred.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Men, Years, Office

  Thomas Jefferson, Andrew M. Allison (1983). “The Real Thomas Jefferson”, Natl Center for Constitutional

• The second office in the government is honorable and easy; the first is but a splendid misery.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Government, Office, Political

  Bernard Mayo, Thomas Jefferson (1988). “Jefferson Himself: The Personal Narrative of a Many-Sided American”, p.199, University of Virginia Press

• The appointment of a woman to office is an innovation for which the public is not prepared, nor I.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Office, Innovation, Prepared

  Thomas Jefferson, Joyce Appleby, Terence Ball (1999). “Jefferson: Political Writings”, p.27, Cambridge University Press

• Those who have once got an ascendancy, and possessed themselves of all the resources of the nation, their revenues and offices, have immense means for retaining their advantage.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Mean, Office, Advantage

  Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoirs, correspondence and private papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. by T.J. Randolph”, p.400

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