"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have" appears, unattributed, in newspaper articles and politicians' speeches starting in the early 1950s. I don't think it would be possible now to trace it to the original crafter of the line. It is certainly not TJ, though.
As a general aside -- many of the spurious and paraphrased items attributed to Jefferson can be traced back to Alfred J Nock's biography, in which he has a terrible sloppy habit of conflating actual Jefferson quotes with either commentary from other authors or himself but making the whole thing look like a direct quote from Jefferson.
"The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases." seems to be a paraphrase of something Jefferson actually did write: "The natural progress of things is for liberty to yeild, and government to gain ground." (Spelling of 'yield' as in original -- a 1788 letter to Edward Carrington. https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-13-02-0120)
Would you post the accurate quotes this compilation is derived from, please?
Thanks!
Jefferson was unbelievably smart & actually covered most of the stupid things that government or people can do...to destroy their Freedom.
"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have" appears, unattributed, in newspaper articles and politicians' speeches starting in the early 1950s. I don't think it would be possible now to trace it to the original crafter of the line. It is certainly not TJ, though.
As a general aside -- many of the spurious and paraphrased items attributed to Jefferson can be traced back to Alfred J Nock's biography, in which he has a terrible sloppy habit of conflating actual Jefferson quotes with either commentary from other authors or himself but making the whole thing look like a direct quote from Jefferson.
"The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases." seems to be a paraphrase of something Jefferson actually did write: "The natural progress of things is for liberty to yeild, and government to gain ground." (Spelling of 'yield' as in original -- a 1788 letter to Edward Carrington. https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-13-02-0120)
тАЬI think myself that we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.тАЭ
тАж is from a letter Jefferson wrote in 1824. https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/98-01-02-4523
As far as I know, the rest of it has nothing to do with Jefferson.