Thomas Jefferson

Quotes

• “All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open ...”
• “Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment...”
• “His anti-slavery sentiments, so forcibly given in his Notes on Virginia, will be quoted with impressive effect as long a...”
• “Jefferson expressed the American idea: political and social pluralism; government of limited, delegated and enumerated p...”
• “Two of Mr. Jefferson's rivals happened to meet on Mrs. Skelton's door-stone. They were shown into a room from which they...”
• “An hereditary chief, strictly limited, the right of war vested in the legislative body, a rigid economy of the public co...”
• “I shall within a few days divest myself of the anxieties and the labors with which I have been oppressed, and retire wit...”
• “All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that...”
• “With all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and prosperous people? Still one thing more, fellow-...”
• “Considering the general tendency to multiply offices and dependencies and to increase expense to the ultimate term of bu...”
• “Jefferson, moved by anger and scorn against the planter class for its fellowship and partnership in the tyranny of the C...”
• “We were laboring under a dropsical fulness of circulating medium. Nearly all of it is now called in by the banks, who ha...”
• “The new Census shews our increase to be in the geometrical ratio of 3 1/6 pr. cent annually which gives a duplication in...”
• “The priests of the different religious sects, who dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of day-light; ...”
• “I see too many proofs of the imperfection of human reason, to entertain wonder or intolerance at any difference of opini...”
• “Necessity, as well as patriotism and confidence, will make us all eager to receive treasury notes, if founded on specifi...”
• “Almost every other American statesman might be described in a parenthesis. A few broad strokes of the brush would paint ...”
• “I say, the earth belongs to each of these generations during its course, fully and in its own right. The second generati...”
• “This very verse, brethren, having emanated from Mr. Jefferson, a much greater philosopher the world never afforded, has ...”
• “But it will be asked, are we to have no banks? Are merchants and others to be deprived of the resource of short accommod...”
• “No one has a natural right to the trade of a money lender, but he who has the money to lend. Let those then among us who...”
• “An unnamed European visitor, in dialogue with Jefferson, as quoted in A Winter in Washington : or, Memoirs of the Seymou...”
• “I had always hoped that the younger generation receiving their early impressions after the flame of liberty had been kind...”
• “I don't know that Jefferson could have survived as a farmer then in that society without having an ability to work his f...”
• “A man has a right to use a saw, an axe, a plane, separately; may he not combine their uses on the same piece of wood? He...”
• “The inhabitants of the ceded territory shall be incorporated in the Union of the United States, and admitted as soon as ...”
• “I am conscious that an equal division of property is impracticable. But the consequences of this enormous inequality pro...”
• “Then there's the odd, of course, fact that he had a very long love affair with a woman who he owned, who he inherited fr...”
• “[...] Congress itself can punish Alexandria, by repealing the law which made it a town, by discontinuing it as a port of...”
• “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. Th...”
• “We shall divert through our own Country a branch of commerce which the European States have thought worthy of the most i...”
• “The true foundation of republican government is the equal right of every citizen, in his person and property, and in the...”
• “All honor to Jefferson to the man, who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single peo...”
• “Architecture worth great attention. As we double our numbers every 20 years we must double our houses. Besides we build ...”
• “The first consideration in immigration is the welfare of the receiving nation. In a new government based on principles u...”
• “I know, indeed, that some honest men fear that a republican government can not be strong, that this Government is not st...”
• “When, in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have conn...”
• “More than 20 years after CBS executives were pressured by Jefferson historians to drop plans for a mini-series on Jeffer...”
• “No experiment can be more interesting than that we are now trying, and which we trust will end in establishing the fact,...”
• “The liberty of the whole earth was depending on the issue of the contest, and was ever such a prize won with so little i...”
• “The naturalists, you know, distribute the history of nature into three kingdoms or departments: zoology, botany, mineral...”
• “Some are whigs, liberals, democrats, call them what you please. Others are tories, serviles, aristocrats, &c. The latter...”
• “What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man! Who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment and death...”
• “In our university [of Virginia] you know there is no Professorship of Divinity. A handle has been made of this, to disse...”
• “And even should the cloud of barbarism and despotism again obscure the science and libraries of Europe, this country rem...”
• “Not attributed to Jefferson until the 21st century. May be a loose paraphrasing of a passage from Declaration of Indepen...”
• “The returning good sense of our country threatens abortion to their hopes, & they believe that any portion of power conf...”
• “Of liberty I would say that, in the whole plenitude of its extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will. But ...”
• “See the Positive Atheism site on the extreme unlikelihood of this quote being authentic. It actually contains some known...”
• “The Christian god can easily be pictured as virtually the same god as the many ancient gods of past civilizations. The C...”