Thomas Jefferson History Quotations

History, in general, only informs us of what bad government is.

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

I join you, therefore, in sincere congratulations that this den of the priesthood is at length broken up, and that a Protestant Popedom is no longer to disgrace the American history and character

A government big enough to supply you with everything you need is a government big enough to take away everything that you have.... The course of history shows that as the government grows, liberty decreases.

One never really knows how much one has been touched by a place until one has left it.

We might have been a free and great people together.

There is on the globe one single spot, the possessor of which is our natural and habitual enemy. It is New Orleans, through which the produce of three-eighths of our territory must pass to market, and from its fertility it will ere long yield more than half of our whole produce and contain more than half our inhabitants.

The same political parties which now agitiate the US have existed through all time. And in fact the terms of whig and tory belong to natural as well as to civil history. They denote the temper and constitution and mind of different individuals.

History has informed us that bodies of men as well as individuals are susceptible of the spirit of tyranny.

History teaches the young the virtues of freedom. By apprising them of the past it will enable them to judge the future.