Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.
NUMBER:
491
AUTHOR:
Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
QUOTATION:
I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.
ATTRIBUTION:
THOMAS JEFFERSON, letter to William Charles Jarvis, September 28, 1820.—The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Paul L. Ford, vol. 10, p. 161 (1899).
