Thomas Jefferson Quotes on the Dangers of Government

Here are some of Thomas Jefferson's warnings to us across the generations regarding the dangers of government run amok.

The proper purpose of government, wrote Thomas Jefferson, is to “guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.” The government “shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.”

As Thomas Jefferson once wrote regarding the "general Welfare" clause:
To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his father has acquired too much, in order to spare to others who (or whose fathers) have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, "to guarantee to everyone a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it."

The same prudence which in private life would forbid our paying our own money for unexplained projects, forbids it in the dispensation of the public moneys.
Thomas Jefferson, letter to Shelton Gilliam, June 19, 1808

The ultimate arbiter is the people of the Union.
Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Johnson, 1823

This I hope will be the age of experiments in government, and that their basis will be founded in principles of honesty, not of mere force.
Thomas Jefferson, 1796

Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories.
Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 14, 1781