Quotes About Jefferson

He supported Jefferson's proposed Land Ordinance of 1784,22 ceding Virginia's western territory to Congress for division into fourteen future states in which "there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude." Congress defeated the Ordinance by one vote.

Jefferson said he only read the advertisements in the newspaper, because it was there he was most likely to find the truth.

In America everybody is of the opinion that he has no social superiors, since all men are equal, but he does not admit that he has no social inferiors, for, from the time of Jefferson onward, the doctrine that all men are equal applies only upwards, not downwards.

The adoption by Jefferson and the Republicans of the political structure of their opponents is of an importance hardly inferior to that of the adoption of the Constitution by the states.

Modern versions of this argument held that American democracy was born of the slave society of rural Virginia, because slavery gave men like Washington and Jefferson the free time to better themselves and to participate in representative government.)

The spirit of resistance to government," Jefferson wrote, "is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive.

Section 13 of the Judiciary Act, in which Congress gave the Court jurisdiction to decide original mandamus actions like Marbury's, was therefore unconstitutional and no mandamus could be issued. The decision gave the Court a measure of insulation at a time of political turmoil; without an order, the Jefferson administration had nothing to complain about.

I'm always aware of various audiences, as a part of my training as a journalist and as part of my training as a citizen of Negroland.

Garfield's assassination attempt made the whole nation care.

Like Jefferson, Brandeis believed that the greatest threat to our constitutional liberties was an uneducated citizenry, and that democracy could not survive both ignorant and free. And

Since you claim him as a kinsman, Private Watson, you cannot have forgotten the immortal words of Jefferson of Virginia." Here he shouted, "I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just!

With Britain distracted by the Napoleonic Wars, President Jefferson felt compelled to get there first—before his long-hated British, with their "bastard liberty," and who, as he contemptuously put it, "would not lose the sale of a bale of fur for the freedom of the whole world." On

Here it was again: colonization theory, gilded by the image of Jefferson, determined by God, driven by white supremacy while claiming otherwise, and callously argued by a member of Lincoln's cabinet.

That the revival of Christianity coincided with the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration, an anniversary made all the more mystical when the news spread that both Jefferson and Adams had died that very day, July 4, 1826, as if by the hand of God, meant that the Declaration itself took on a religious cast. The self-evident, secular truths of the Declaration of Independence became, to evangelical Americans, the truths of revealed religion.

Jefferson felt it should be the goal of the whole nation to use education and every other means to stimulate and encourage those citizens who clearly exhibited a special talent for public service. He felt one of the greatest threats to the new government would be the day when the best qualified people refused to undertake the tedious, arduous, and sometimes unpleasant task of filling important public offices.

Gallatin had warned Jefferson that " government prohibitions do always more mischief than had been calculated; and it is not without much hesitation that a statesman should hazard to regulate the concerns of individuals as if he could do it better than themselves.

Ko?ciuszko's directives regarding slaves were never carried out by Jefferson or anyone else.

probably the greatest concentration of talent and genius in this house except for perhaps those times when Thomas Jefferson ate alone.

every small Southern town had an Adams, a Jefferson, and a Washington, but no Lincoln or Grant.

Jefferson said men are naturally divided by temperament into two classes. Those who fear and distrust ordinary people, and want to concentrate power in the hands of a small, select elite—and those who trust and cherish ordinary people, and think of them as the safest, if not always the wisest repositories of power.

The human psyche is pathetic," I say—I declaim—to my psychopharmacologist. "It's what we have, Miss Jefferson," he replies, "it's what we have.

By making this wine known to the public, I have rendered my country as great a service as if I had enabled it to pay back the national debt.

Here was buried Thomas Jefferson Author of the Declaration of American Independence Of the Statute of Virginia for religious freedom & Father of the University of Virginia.

We stand in the shadow of Jefferson who believed that a society founded upon the rule of law and liberty was dependent upon public education and the diffusion of knowledge.