Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.
NUMBER:
382
AUTHOR:
Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
QUOTATION:
I am for a government rigorously frugal & simple, applying all the possible savings of the public revenue to the discharge of the national debt; and not for a multiplication of officers & salaries merely to make partisans, & for increasing, by every device, the public debt, on the principle of it’s being a public blessing.
ATTRIBUTION:
Vice President THOMAS JEFFERSON, letter to Elbridge Gerry, January 26, 1799.—The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Paul L. Ford, vol. 7, p. 327 (1896).
