[W]hat country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not
warned from time to time that [the] people preserve the spirit of
resistance? Let them take arms...The tree of liberty must be
refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Col. William S. Smith, 1787
“Rightful liberty is unobstructed action, according to our will, within limits
drawn around us by the equal rights of others.”
-- Thomas Jefferson
“As to the species of exercise, I advise the gun. While this gives [only]
moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise, and independence
to the mind. Games played with the ball and others of that nature, are too
violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun,
therefore, be the constant companion to your walks.”
-- Thomas Jefferson, writing to his teenaged nephew.
When all government ...in little as in great things... shall be drawn to
Washington as the center of all power; it will render powerless the checks
provided of one government on another, and will become as venal and oppressive
as the government from which we separated." -- Thomas Jefferson, 1821
I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature.
- Thomas Jefferson
Delay is preferable to error.
-- Thomas Jefferson
I place economy among the first and most important virtues, and public debt as
the greatest of dangers to be feared. To preserve our independence, we must
not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. If we run into such debts, we
must be taxed in our meat and drink, in our necessities and in our comforts,
in our labor and in our amusements. If we can prevent the government from
wasting the labor of the people, under the pretense of caring for them, they
will be happy.
-- Thomas Jefferson
They [preachers] dread the advance of science as witches do the approach
of daylight and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subversions
of the duperies on which they live.
- Thomas Jefferson
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free,
... it expects what never was and never will be.
-- Thomas Jefferson
In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to
liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses
in return for protection to his own. -- Thomas Jefferson, 1814
“I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world,
and do not find in our particular superstition (Christianity) one redeeming
feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology.”
-- Thomas Jefferson
False is the idea of utility that sacrifices a thousand real advantages for
one imaginary or trifling inconvenience; that would take fire from men because
it burns, and water because one may drown in it; that has no remedy for evils
except destruction. The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws of
such a nature. They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined
to commit crimes.
-- Cesare Beccaria, as quoted by Thomas Jefferson's Commonplace book
“I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as
necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.”
-- Thomas Jefferson, Letter to James Madison, January 30, 1787
...difference of opinion is advantageious in religion. The several sects
perform the office of a common censor morum over each other. Is uniformity
attainable? Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the
introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned;
yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity.
- Thomas Jefferson, "Notes on Virginia"
When a man assumes a public trust, he should consider himself as public
property.
-- Thomas Jefferson
It is neither wealth nor splendour, but tranquillity and occupation, that gives
happiness.
-- Thomas Jefferson
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free,
... it expects what never was and never will be.
-- Thomas Jefferson
A morsel of genuine history is a thing so rare as to be always valuable.
-- Thomas Jefferson
Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.
-- Thomas Jefferson
The advertisement is the most truthful part of a newspaper
-- Thomas Jefferson
When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, a hundred.
-- Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was the first president to shake hands as a greeting - before that, they bowed.
“In matters of principle, stand like a rock; in matters of taste, swim with
the current.”
-- Thomas Jefferson
I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing...
-- Thomas Jefferson
No, my friend, the way to have good and safe government, is not to trust it
all to one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to every one exactly
the functions he is competent to. It is by dividing and subdividing these
republics from the national one down through all its subordinations, until it
ends in the administration of every man's farm by himself; by placing under
every one what his own eye may superintend, that all will be done for the best.
-- Thomas Jefferson, to Joseph Cabell, 1816
Delay is preferable to error.
-- Thomas Jefferson
Let us, then, fellow citizens, unite with one heart and one mind. Let us
restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which
liberty and even life itself are but dreary things. And let us reflect
that having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which
mankind so long bled, we have yet gained little if we counternance a
political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of a bitter and
bloody persecutions.
- Thomas Jefferson
This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were
no religion in it. -- John Adams, in a letter to Thomas Jefferson.
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions,
that I wish it always to be kept alive. It will often be exercised when
wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little
rebellion now and then. -- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Abigail Adams, 1787
Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.
-- Thomas Jefferson