Did Thomas Jefferson say, “When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty”?

A popular statement on the Internet by the third president of the United States is that rebellion against unjust laws is not only the right, but also the duty of every citizen. We decided to check if he said anything like that.

A quote attributed to Thomas Jefferson can often be found on websites with selections aphorisms, as well as in user publications on forums, on social networks (“VKontakte", X, Telegram, Facebook*) and on blog platforms (LiveJournal, "Zen"). The wording in publications differs slightly (for example, “debt” is replaced by “duty"), but the general meaning does not change. The phrase can often be found in discussions on political topics.

Thomas Jefferson - third president of the United States and key author of the Declaration of Independence. The writings of one of the founding fathers of the United States have been carefully studied since his death in 1826, and much of it has been digitized. The most complete collections of Jefferson's texts, including letters both sent by him and received from other recipients, are stored in Princeton University, US National Archives And Library of Congress. It was not possible to find the quotation in question in any of these collections.

But she was found on website The Thomas Jefferson Foundation is a non-profit organization founded to preserve the politician's legacy and located at his residence, Monticello, Virginia. However, the quote is noted there as being incorrectly attributed to Jefferson. According to the foundation, the politician was first listed as the author of the statement only in 2006, 180 years after his death, in the book Save the Men: Common Sense on Family and Gender by Richard Doyle. However, already in the next editorial staff, published in 2007, there was no such quote. Perhaps the author realized that he had made a mistake in the attribution and removed the phrase.

In 2012, a statement attracted attention Barry Popica - an American etymologist who acted as a consultant to many authoritative reference books, for example, the Oxford English Dictionary. He also found no evidence that Jefferson had anything to do with the phrase. Moreover, he found several examples of its use without attribution at all, decades before Doyle apparently first attributed it to the third president of the United States. Thus, back in the early 1980s, political activists from Germany and Australia used the phrase with minor differences in wording.

At the same time, in Declaration of Independence, in the creation of which Jefferson played a key role, there are the following lines: “...When a long series of abuses and usurpations, invariably pursuing the same object, reveals a design to subject them (the people - Ed.) to absolute despotism, it is their right, their duty, to overthrow such a government.” The wording differs very significantly from the phrase being analyzed, but the general meaning is quite close. 

Thus, Thomas Jefferson is not referring to the common quote about the duty of citizens to resist unjust laws and the authorities who enact them. They began to attribute the statement to him only almost two centuries after his death, but earlier it had been found without attribution at all. The Declaration of Independence of the United States, to which Jefferson made a significant contribution, contains lines about the right of the people to insurrection, but they differ significantly from the wording that has diverged. 

*Russian authorities consider the company Meta Platforms Inc., which owns the social networks Facebook and Instagram, to be an extremist organization; its activities in Russia are prohibited.

Cover photo: Rembrandt Peale, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Incorrect quote attribution

What do our verdicts mean?

Read on the topic:

1. Snopes. No evidence Jefferson said: 'When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty'
2. Did Stepan Bandera say that people who prefer bread to freedom lose both?
3. Did Bismarck say: “Those who love sausages and respect the law would do well not to see how both are done”?
4. Did Orwell say, “The further a society moves away from the truth, the more it hates those who tell it”?