Thomas Jefferson
  • Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.

  • The constitutions of most of our States assert that all power is inherent in the people that... it is their right and duty to be at all times armed.

  • 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.

  • Power is not alluring to pure minds.

  • I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.