evidence: An image shared on Facebook claims that founding father Thomas Jefferson said, "When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty." [...] Social media users frequently ascribe sayings to Jefferson, a founding father and later the third president. (RELATED: Did Thomas Jefferson Say That Big Government Could ‘Take Everything You Have’?) [...] Furthermore, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, which maintains his estate at Monticello, categorizes it as a spurious quotation. The source of the expression may actually be a series of debates on socialism published in 1914, according to the Monticello website. (The wording varies slightly in this instance.)