Thomas Jefferson Natural Rights Quotes & Sayings

Whereas it appeareth that however certain forms of government are better calculated than others to protect individuals in the free exercise of their natural rights, and are at the same time themselves better guarded against degeneracy, yet experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny; and it is believed that the most effectual means of preventing this would be, to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large, ... whence it becomes expedient for promoting the publick happiness that those persons, whom nature hath endowed with genius and virtue, should be rendered by liberal education worthy to receive, and able to guard the sacred deposit of the rights and liberties of their fellow citizens, and that they should be called to that charge without regard to wealth, birth or accidental condition of circumstance. — Thomas Jefferson

The rights hereby asserted are of the natural rights of mankind, and that if any act shall be hereafter passed to repeal the present or to narrow its operation, such act will be an infringement of natural right. — Thomas Jefferson

Our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. — Thomas Jefferson

A right to property is founded in our natural wants, in the means with which we are endowed to satisfy these wants, and the right to what we acquire by those means without violating the similar rights of other sensible beings. — Thomas Jefferson

Our legislators are not sufficiently apprized of the rightful limits of their power; that their true office is to declare and enforce only our natural rights and duties, and to take none of them from us. — Thomas Jefferson

Some other natural rights ... [have] not yet entered into any declaration of rights. — Thomas Jefferson

Natural rights [are] the objects for the protection of which society is formed and municipal laws established. — Thomas Jefferson

The idea is quite unfounded that on entering into society we give up any natural rights. — Thomas Jefferson

There is no right to a job or a wage rate, but there is a right to move from one country to another in search of a better life. This is the point of view of Thomas Jefferson, John Locke and other great supporters of the natural rights tradition in America. — Alex Tabarrok

All ... natural rights may be abridged or modified in [their] exercise by law. — Thomas Jefferson

Questions of natural right are triable by their conformity with the moral sense and reason of man. — Thomas Jefferson

Legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church & State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties. — Thomas Jefferson

It [appears] that however certain forms of government are better calculated than others to protect individuals in the free exercise of their natural rights, and are at the same time themselves better guarded against degeneracy, yet experience [has] shown that, even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny. — Thomas Jefferson

Every man is under the natural duty of contributing to the necessities of the society; and this is all the laws should enforce on him. — Thomas Jefferson

Our civil rights have no dependance on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry; that therefore the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right; that it tends also to corrupt the principles of that very religion it is meant to encourage, — Thomas Jefferson

[O]ur rules can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God. — Thomas Jefferson

Voltaire said about God that 'there is no God, but don't tell that to my servant, lest he murder me at night'. Hammurabi would have said the same about his principle of hierarchy, and Thomas Jefferson about human rights. Homo sapiens has no natural rights, just as spiders, hyenas and chimpanzees have no natural rights. But don't tell that to our servants, lest they murder us at night. — Yuval Noah Harari

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