Thomas Jefferson Quotes About Property

• Legislators invent too many devices for subdividing property, only taking care to let their subdivisions go hand in hand with the natural affections of the human mind.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Government, Hands, Mind

  Thomas Jefferson, Jean M. Yarbrough (1963). “The Essential Jefferson”, p.154, Hackett Publishing

• The true foundation of republican government is the equal right of every citizen in his person and property and in their management.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Government, Southern, Foundation

  Thomas Jefferson (1977). “The Portable Thomas Jefferson”, p.440, Penguin

• He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Freedom, Ideas, Light

  Letter to Isaac McPherson, 13 Aug. 1813

• A right to property is founded in our natural wants, in the means with which we are endowed to satisfy these wants, and the right to what we acquire by those means without violating the similar rights of other sensible beings.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Mean, Rights, Want

  Thomas Jefferson, Henry Augustine Washington (1854). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and Private : Published by the Order of the Joint Committee of Congress on the Library, from the Original Manuscripts, Deposited in the Department of State”, p.591

• 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”

• Legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property... Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise. Whenever there is in any country, uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Country, Mean, Law

  Thomas Jefferson's letter to James Madison, founders.archives.gov. October 28, 1785.

• Whenever there are in any country uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labor and live on. The small landowners are the most precious part of a state

  Thomas Jefferson

  Country, Business, Men

• The constitutions of most of our States assert, that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves, in all cases to which they think themselves competent, or they may act by representatives, freely and equally chosen; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed; that they are entitled to freedom of person, freedom of religion, freedom of property, and freedom of the press.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Exercise, Gun, Strong Arms

  "The writings of Thomas Jefferson".

• When a man assumes a public trust he should consider himself a public property.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Trust, Truth, Men

  Remark to Baron von Humboldt, 1807, in Rayner 'Life of Jefferson' (1834) p. 356

• A strict observance of the written laws is doubtless one of the highest virtues of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to written law would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property and all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the end to the means.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Country, Freedom, Mean

• In defense of our persons and properties under actual violation, we took up arms. When that violence shall be removed, when hostilities shall cease on the part of the aggressors, hostilities shall cease on our part also.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Defense, Arms, Violence

  Thomas Jefferson (1950). “The papers of Thomas Jefferson”

• It is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property is derived from nature at all. It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance. By a universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally and in common is the property for the moment of him who occupies it; but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Men, Progress Of Society, Law

• The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty and property of their constituents. There is no safe deposit for these but with the people themselves, nor can they be safe with them without information. Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Education, Men, People

  Letter to Charles Yancey, 6 Jan. 1816

• In our own native land, in defense of the freedom that is our birthright and which we ever enjoyed till the late violation of it. For the protection of our property, acquired solely by the honest industry of our fore-fathers and ourselves, against violence actually offered, we have taken up arms. We shall lay them down when hostilities shall cease on the part of the aggressors, and all danger of their being renewed shall be removed, and not before.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Father, Taken, Land

  Thomas Jefferson, Joyce Appleby, Terence Ball (1999). “Jefferson: Political Writings”, p.87, Cambridge University Press

• That paper money has some advantages is admitted. But that its abuses also are inevitable and, by breaking up the measure of value, makes a lottery of all private property, cannot be denied.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Abuse, Investing, Paper

  Thomas Jefferson “Selected letters of Thomas Jefferson”, Lulu.com

• By nature's law, every man has a right to seize and retake by force his own property taken from him by another, by force of fraud. Nor is this natural right among the first which is taken into the hands of regular government after it is instituted. It was long retained by our ancestors. It was a part of their common law, laid down in their books, recognized by all the authorities, and regulated as to circumstances of practice.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Book, Taken, Men

  Thomas Jefferson (1884). “The Works of Thomas Jefferson: Published by Order of Congress from the Original Manuscripts Deposited in the Department of State”

• Still less let it be proposed that our properties within our own territories shall be taxed or regulated by any power on earth but our own.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Taxation, Earth, Territory

  "Jefferson: Writings".

• We do, then, most solemnly before God and the world declare that regardless of every consequence, at the risk of every distress, the arms we have been compelled to assume we will use with perseverance, exerting to their utmost energies all those powers which our Creator hath given us to preserve that liberty which he committed to us in sacred deposit and to protect from every hostile hand our lives and our properties.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Perseverance, Hands, Risk

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

• The banks themselves were doing business on capitals three-fourths of which were fictitious. This fictitious capital... is now to be lost, and to fall on somebody; it must take on those who have property to meet it, and probably on the less cautious part, who, not aware of the impending catastrophe, have suffered themselves to contract, or to be in debt, and must now sacrifice their property of a value many times the amount of the debt. We have been truly sowing the wind, and are now reaping the whirlwind.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Wisdom, Fall, Sacrifice

• But whatever be their degree of talent it is no measure of their rights. Because Sir Isaac Newton was superior to others in understanding, he was not therefore lord of the person or property of others. On this subject they are gaining daily in the opinions of nations, and hopeful advances are making towards their re- establishment on an equal footing with the other colors of the human family.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Rights, Color, Hopeful

  Thomas Jefferson, Jerry Holmes (2002). “Thomas Jefferson: A Chronology of His Thoughts”, p.219, Rowman & Littlefield

• If NATURE has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea... No one possesses the less, because every other possess the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Creativity, Thinking, Light

  Letter to Isaac McPherson, 13 Aug. 1813

• They are nations of eternal war. All their energies are expended in the destruction of the labor, property, and lives of their people.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Peace, War, People

  Thomas Jefferson (1861). “Correspondence. Reports and opinions while secretarry of state”, p.288

• the field of knolege is the common property of all mankind

  Thomas Jefferson

  Educational, Knowledge, Fields

  Thomas Jefferson (1898). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: 1807-1815”

• Our wish is that...[there be] maintained that state of property, equal or unequal, which results to every man from his own industry or that of his fathers.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Father, Men, Wish

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

• Where the law of the majority ceases to be acknowledged, there government ends; the law of the strongest takes its place, and life and property are his who can take them.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Government, Law, Democracy

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

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