Thomas Jefferson Quotes

After literal years of trying to figure out the difference between State and Federal government, Dave Champion’s book Income Tax: Shattering the Myths has directed me to some Thomas Jefferson quotes that do an INCREDIBLE job of explaining the original intent regarding this separation. These quotes are quite important and revealing and will bring massive clarity to your confusions.

  1. “The States can best govern our home concerns and the general government our foreign ones. I wish, therefore . . . never to see all offices transferred to Washington, where, further withdrawn from the eyes of the people, they may more secretly be bought and sold at market.” Ref: Book called The Real Thomas Jefferson

  2. “My general plan would be to make the States one as to everything connected with foreign nations and several as to everything purely domestic.” Ref: Thomas Jefferson, Henry Augustine Washington (1859). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence”, p.217

  3. “our citizens have wisely formed themselves into one nation as to others, and several states as among themselves. to the United nation belongs our external & mutual relations: to each state severally the care of our persons, our property, our reputation, and religious freedom. this wise distribution, if carefully preserved, will prove I trust, from example, that while smaller governments are better adapted to the ordinary objects of society, larger confederations more effectually secure independance, and the preservation of republican government.” Ref: Extract from Thomas Jefferson to the Rhode Island General Assembly - Washington May 26. 1801

  4. “the true theory of our constitution is surely the wisest & best, that the states are independant as to every thing within themselves, & united as to every thing respecting foreign nations. let the general government be once reduced to foreign concerns only, and let our affairs be disentangled from those of all other nations, except as to commerce which the merchants will manage the better, the more they are left free to manage for themselves, and our general government may be reduced to a very simple organization, & a very unexpensive one: a few plain duties to be performed by a few servants.” Ref: From Thomas Jefferson to Gideon Granger, 13 August 1800

  5. “The best general key for the solution of questions of power between our governments is the fact that ‘every foreign and federal power is given to the federal government, and, to the states, every power purely domestic.’ I recollect but one instance of controul vested in the federal, over the state authorities, in a matter purely domestic; which is that of metallic tenders. the Federal is, in truth, our foreign government which department alone is taken from the sovereignty of the separate states.” Ref: From Thomas Jefferson to Robert Selden Garnett, 14 February 1824