Quotes from one of our most revered founding fathers. What would he make of our government today? The existence of the Department of Homeland Security? The so-called “Patriot Act”? The whole Intelligent Design debate and rise of the Christian Right? The debate over the 2nd amendment?

Thomas Jefferson:

• Experience hath shown, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.
• A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.
• For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their best security.
• Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies.
• All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.
• Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.
• A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor and bread it has earned – this is the sum of good government.
• For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their best security.
• No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.
• I am mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, the sale of a book can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too.
• I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature.
• I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition (Christianity) one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology.
• 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.
• In every country and every age, the priest had been hostile to Liberty.
• My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.
• Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence.
• Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.
• Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.
• The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.
• 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.
• To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.
• When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.