Quotes About Thomas Jefferson

Nothing was or is farther from my intentions, than to enlist myself as the champion of a fixed opinion, where I have only expressed doubt.

I cannot live without books: but fewer will suffice where amusement, and not use, is the only future object.

Whiskey claims to itself alone the exclusive office of sot-making.

The main objects of all science, the freedom and happiness of man. . . . [are] the sole objects of all legitimate government. (A plaque with this quotation, with the first phrase omitted, is in the stairwell of the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty.)

Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence.

he repudiated the writings of the Apostle Paul, whom he considered the (first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus

You seem to consider the [Supreme Court] judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions; a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy.

T]he artillery of the press has been leveled against us, charged with whatsoever its licentiousness could devise or dare. These abuses of an institution so important to freedom and science are deeply to be regretted...

If there is one principle more deeply rooted in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest.

The inquisition of public opinion overwhelms in practice the freedom asserted by the laws in theory.

no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.

I hope they pardoned them. The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that i wish it to be always kept alive....I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the atmosphere.

Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of people that these liberties are the gift of God?

I consider him [Alexander von Humboldt] the most important scientist whom I have met.

He [Weishaupt] says, no one ever laid a surer foundation for liberty than our grand master, Jesus of Nazareth.

the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God

That one generation of men in civil society have no right to make acts to bind another, is a truth that cannot be confused.

No nation has ever yet existed or been governed without religion. Nor can be. The Christian religion is the best religion that has been given to man and I as chief Magistrate of this nation am bound to give it the sanction of my example. Good morning Sir. [Replying on his way to church one Sunday to a friend, who said to him "You going to church Mr. J. You do not believe a word in it."]

The State of the Union has become, under presidents of both parties, a political pep rally degrading to everyone. The judiciary and uniformed military should never attend. And Congress, by hosting a spectacle so monarchical in structure (which is why Thomas Jefferson sent his thoughts to Congress in writing) deepens the diminishment of the legislative branch as a mostly reactive servant of an overbearing executive.

As Thomas Jefferson wrote the following year, "the moderation and virtue of a single character has probably prevented this revolution from being closed as most others have been by a subversion of that liberty it was intended to establish.

Incluso las ideas se pueden considerar abundantes, en cierto modo, porque es posible propagarlas sin límite debido a su naturaleza «no competitiva». Como escribió Thomas Jefferson, el creador del sistema de patentes en Estados Unidos: «Quien recibe una idea de mí, recibe una instrucción para él sin disminuir la mía; como aquel que enciende su vela en la mía, recibe luz sin dejarme en la oscuridad».

As far back as 1813, Thomas Jefferson understood that ideas were not really property, or if they were property they differed from real estate. He wrote, "He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me." If

Thomas Jefferson, who advocated expulsion of blacks from the United States in order to save the nation; and Kentuckian Henry Clay, who had established the American Colonization Society, which had moved thousands of free blacks into what is now Liberia—Lincoln soon laid out his own resettlement plans. He had selected Chiriquí,

I suppose there's a melancholy tone at the back of the American mind, a sense of something lost. And it's the lost world of Thomas Jefferson. It is the lost sense of innocence that we could live with a very minimal state, with a vast sense of space in which to work out freedom.