“It is while we are young that the habit of industry is formed. If not then, it never is afterward.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty, than those attending too small a degree of it.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“In questions of power, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the constitution.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“[A] lawyer without books would be like a workman without tools.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“Our civil rights have no dependence upon our religious opinions more than our opinions in physics or geometry.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“A machine for making revolutions is doing precisely the wrong thing at just the right time.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions or property in geometrical progression as they rise. Whenever there are in any country uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labor and live on.
―
Thomas Jefferson
“Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“It be urged that the wild and uncultivated tree, hitherto yielding sour and bitter fruit only, can never be made to yield better; yet we know that the grafting art implants a new tree on the savage stock, producing what is most estimable in kind and degree. Education, in like manner, engrafts a new man on the native stock, and improves what in his nature was vicious and perverse into qualities of virtue and social worth.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“I predict future happiness for Americans, if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“Where the preamble declares that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word "Jesus Christ," so that it should read "a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion." The insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of it's protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and infidel of every denomination.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions any more than our opinions in physics or geometry...”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“Thomas Jefferson asked himself “In what country on earth would you rather live ” He first answered “Certainly in my own where are all my friends my relations and the earliest and sweetest affections and recollections of my life.” But he continued “which would be your second choice ” His answer “France.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“Every day is lost in which we do not learn something useful. Man has no nobler or more valuable possession than time.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
