My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government
Not Thomas Jefferson — actually Senator John Sharp WilliamsJohn Sharp Williams1854–1932 · U.S. senator from Mississippi; House minority leader, 1903–1909
The line is Williams’ own, from his 1913 Columbia University book Thomas Jefferson: His Permanent Influence on American Institutions, page 49 — a book about Jefferson, not by him. Williams actually wrote “most bad government has grown out of too much government”; the familiar “results from” wording is a later variant, and Jefferson’s own name was not attached to it in print until 1950.
“My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government” John Sharp Williams, Thomas Jefferson: His Permanent Influence on American Institutions (New York: Columbia University Press, 1913), 49 — "My reading of history convinces me that most bad government has grown out of too much government." Not Thomas Jefferson: the Thomas Jefferson Foundation lists it as a spurious quotation, first attributed to Jefferson in print in 1950. Verified via Quotle.info, 22 Jul 2026.
⚠ The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Thomas Jefferson. Use the credit shown above instead.
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Provenance
The page it actually comes from
Work
Thomas Jefferson: His Permanent Influence on American Institutions
Author
John Sharp Williams (1854–1932)
Published
New York: Columbia University Press, 1913 — Columbia University Lectures, Blumenthal Foundation
Location
Page 49, chapter “The Revolutionist”
Our forefathers knew the danger of excess of government and were bent upon so simplifying, limiting and checking it, that it must forever remain a servant and could never become a master. My reading of history convinces me that most bad government has grown out of too much government. It is a sort of inherent characteristic of all government, as of all conscious organisms, yearly and almost daily, to take to itself more and more jurisdiction…
p. 49
Transcribed from the Cornell University copy scanned by the Internet Archive. Note the printed wording: “has grown out of,” not “results from.”
The Thomas Jefferson Foundation lists the line among its Spurious Quotations ↗: not found in Jefferson’s writings, earliest appearance in print 1913, earliest appearance attributed to Jefferson 1950.
The 1913 book itself is online: the sentence sits on page 49 of the Internet Archive scan ↗, in Williams’ own argument about the founders limiting government.
Monticello’s quotation database carries a matching spurious-quote record ↗ for the wording that circulates online.
✓Public domain
The sentence was first published in John Sharp Williams’ Thomas Jefferson: His Permanent Influence on American Institutions (Columbia University Press, 1913). A U.S. work published in 1913 is in the public domain, and the scanned copy carries the note that there are no known U.S. copyright restrictions on the text.
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Fact-check
Where the credit went wrong
This is a textbook case of a quote drifting from the author of a book to its subject — helped along by a wording change that made it punchier.
✕
The attributionThomas Jefferson Spurious
The Thomas Jefferson Foundation searched the Papers of Thomas Jefferson and the Hathi Trust Jefferson collections and found nothing; it lists the line under Spurious Quotations ↗, with no attribution to Jefferson in print before 1950.
✕
The wording“results from” vs. “has grown out of” Altered
Williams’ printed sentence reads “most bad government has grown out of too much government” — see page 49 of the 1913 scan ↗. Monticello records “results from” as the circulating form and “has grown out of” as a variation.
✕
The near-missA real Jefferson line, confused with this one Different quote
How a book about Jefferson became a quote by Jefferson
Williams was arguing that America’s founders deliberately built a government hemmed in by checks, and that governments tend to accumulate power until they topple under their own weight. The sentence sits in the middle of that argument, in the chapter titled “The Revolutionist,” a few lines before he writes that “Tom Jefferson did not attach a particle too much importance to the simplification of official life and governmental machinery.”
That proximity is almost certainly how the misattribution happened. A quotation lifted out of a book whose title is Thomas Jefferson reads, at a glance, like something Jefferson said. Monticello’s researchers record no printed attribution to Jefferson until 1950 — nearly four decades after Williams published it under his own name.
A sentence written about Jefferson, in a book named for Jefferson, eventually got filed as a sentence by Jefferson.
What Jefferson actually wrote that sounds a bit like it
Writing to John Norvell on 11 June 1807, Jefferson offered a reading list on government and remarked: “History in general only informs us what bad government is.” It is a comment on the uses of history, not a thesis about the size of the state — and it is the closest thing in Jefferson’s papers that Monticello’s researchers could find.
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1854–1932 · U.S. senator from Mississippi; House minority leader, 1903–1909
John Sharp Williams was a Mississippi Democrat who served in the U.S. House from 1893 to 1909 — six of those years as minority leader — and then in the Senate from 1911 to 1923, where he became one of Woodrow Wilson’s staunchest allies. A University of Virginia–trained lawyer known for his wit on the House floor, he was invited to deliver Columbia University’s Blumenthal Foundation lectures on Jefferson, published in 1913. Williams was also, by the record of his own speeches, an unapologetic white supremacist — a fact the quote’s modern circulation entirely erases.
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Cite this
Primary source
John Sharp Williams, Thomas Jefferson: His Permanent Influence on American Institutions (New York: Columbia University Press, 1913), 49.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government’?” Last verified 22 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/my-reading-of-history-convinces-me-that-most-bad-government/