"The government that governs least is the best" — Jefferson never said it

Common attribution: Thomas Jefferson.

Actual source: Henry David Thoreau, "Civil Disobedience," 1849 — 23 years after Jefferson's death.

The phrase may trace earlier to John O'Sullivan's editorials in the United States Magazine and Democratic Review in the late 1830s.

Jefferson supported public education, the Louisiana Purchase, federally funded scientific exploration (Lewis and Clark), and as documented in his 1785 letter to Madison, accelerating progressive wealth taxation. The libertarian Jefferson is largely a 20th-century invention.