Monday, December 8, 2008

Thomas Jefferson on Protecting the Rights of the People (2 of 3)

Self-evident truth that carries with it the force to change our way of thinking and in turn change the way we govern.
clipped from etext.virginia.edu


"If we are made in some degree for others, yet in a greater are we made for ourselves. It were contrary to feeling and indeed ridiculous to suppose that a man had less rights in himself than one of his neighbors, or all of them put together. This would be slavery, and not that liberty which the bill of rights has made inviolable, and for the preservation of which our government has been charged." --Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, 1782. ME 4:196, Papers 6:185


"No one has a right to obstruct another exercising his faculties innocently for the relief of sensibilities made a part of his nature." --Thomas Jefferson to Pierre Samuel Dupont de Nemours, 1816. ME 14:490


"No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another, and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him." --Thomas Jefferson to Francis Gilmer, 1816. ME 15:24

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