Fact Check: Jefferson Said, 'When the People Fear the Government There Is Tyranny...'?

Claim:

Thomas Jefferson said "when the people fear the government there is tyranny, when the government fears the people, there is liberty."

Rating:

Misattributed ( About this rating? )

In the summer of 2024, people on the internet shared a quote they believed had come from U.S. Founding Father Thomas Jefferson ( archived ):

This post on X included an image of Jefferson, with the quote:

When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.

It had garnered 8,168 views as of this writing, as well as 472 likes. The quote appeared on other social media platforms, including Reddit and Facebook . At least one defendant of the the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol Attack attributed these words to Jefferson during his trial in an attempt to justify his participation in the riot.

It appeared in various formats, including with the two clauses of the sentence reversed, for example on this t-shirt , for sale for $24:

But as we'll see, there is no evidence Jefferson ever said this. We have therefore given it a "Misattributed" rating.

The Thomas Jefferson Foundation website, Monticello.org, addressed this question. Dedicated to the preservation of and education about Jefferson's legacy, the organization maintains and researches archives of documents by or about the author of the Declaration of Independence. It includes on its website various bits of information under what it describes as a " Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia ." One of the sections of this page is dedicated to " spurious quotations ."

In this section, one of the quotes it examines is this one and its variation . Researchers associated with the foundation said they were not able to find any of these versions in any of the repositories of Jefferson's writings. Instead, researching various other sources on the internet, including Google Books, Google Scholar, JSTOR and other archival sites, they were able to determine that the quote first appeared in the 1914 publication of the 1912 Barnhill-Tichenor Debate on Socialism , in which Henry M. Tichenor, a socialist thinker, and John Basil Barnhill, an anti-socialist writer, debated socialism in a series of essays. In "Indictment of Socialism No. 3," Barnhill listed a series of points. The first one is the quote, and it is not attributed to Jefferson:

Indictment of Socialism No. 3

By John Basil Barnhill

When my Sweatbox has failed to effect a cure — and I have rarely known it to fail — I have recourse then to a series of knockout drops, a few of which are here appended:

1. Where the people fear the government you have tyranny. Where the government fears the people you have liberty.

2. The surest way to make a scoundrel out of a saint is to give him the power of spending other people's money — and Socialism would multiply infinitely such opportunities.

Monticello.org then pointed out that the quote later appeared with the clauses inverted, and attributed to Jefferson, in a 1994 publication by Gyeorgos C. Hatonn titled "Butterflies, Mind Control | The Razor's Edge | It's All in the Game."

Sources:

Barnhill-Tichenor Debate on Socialism. 1912. Internet Archive, http://archive.org/details/BarnhillTichenor .

Brockell, Gillian. 'So Your Historical Quote Turned out to Be Fake'. The Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2023/07/14/quotes-thomas-jefferson-january-6/ . https://archive.is/qbBaL#selection-401.0-401.46.

'Spurious Quotations'. Monticello, https://www.monticello.org/research-education/thomas-jefferson-encyclopedia/category/spurious-quotations/ . Accessed 21 Aug. 2024.

'Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia'. Monticello, https://www.monticello.org/research-education/thomas-jefferson-encyclopedia/ . Accessed 21 Aug. 2024.

Weiner, Rachel, and Spencer Hsu. 'Former Police Chief Convicted after Defending Self with False Jan. 6 Claims'. The Washington Post, 13 July 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/07/13/former-police-chief-convicted-after-defending-self-with-jan-6-claims/ . https://archive.is/w9kiO.

'When Government Fears the People, There Is Liberty... (Spurious Quotation)'. Monticello, https://www.monticello.org/research-education/thomas-jefferson-encyclopedia/when-government-fears-people-there-liberty-spurious-quotation/#fn-1 . Accessed 21 Aug. 2024.