A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes that people's rights come from natural law rather than from government authority.
Thomas Jefferson asserts that the rights of individuals are inherent and based on natural law, thus they are not granted or bestowed by rulers or governments. This perspective underlines the concept that freedom and individual rights are fundamental aspects of humanity and should be recognized as such universally, rather than being privileges that can be given or taken away by those in power.
In practice
During a lecture on political philosophy, one might quote Jefferson to illustrate the foundation of individual rights.
The firmness with which the (American) people have withstood the... abuses of the press, the discernment they have manifested between truth and falsehood, show that they may safely be trusted to hear everything true and false and to form a correct judgment between them.
I, place economy among the first & most important republican virtues, & public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared
βWe must make our choice between economy and liberty or confusion and servitude...If we run into such debts, we must be taxed in our meat and drink, in our necessities and comforts, in our labor and in our amusements...if we can prevent the government from wasting the labor of the people, under the pretense of caring for them, they will be happy.
Very many and very meritorious were the worthy patriots who assisted in bringing back our government to its republican tack. To preserve it in that, will require unremitting vigilance.
A nation, as a society, forms a moral person, and every member of it is personally responsible for his society.
Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.
Woe to him who saw no more sense in his life, no aim, no purpose, and therefore no point in carrying on.
Where self-interest is violently suppressed, it is replaced by a burdensome system of bureaucratic control which dries up the wellsprings of initiative and creativity.
Place is security, space is freedom.
I know that I have lived because I have felt, and, feeling giving me the knowledge of my existence.
Of course the world of work begins to become - threatens to become - our only world, to the exclusion of all else. The demands of the working world grow ever more total, grasping ever more completely the whole of human existence.
Religion and science are the two conjugated faces or phases of one and the same complete act of knowledge - the only one which can embrace the past and future of evolution and so contemplate, measure and fulfil them.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.