“That liberty [is pure] which is to go to all, and not to the few or the rich alone. (to Horatio Gates, 1798)”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“Resolved ... that it would be a dangerous delusion were a confidence in the men of our choice to silence our fears for the safety of our rights: that confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism — free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence;”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened. --”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, no culture comparable to that of the garden...But though an old man, I am but a young gardener.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of . . . but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independent stand we are compelled to take.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“That one generation of men in civil society have no right to make acts to bind another, is a truth that cannot be confused.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“Do not be too severe upon the errors of the people, but reclaim them by enlightening them.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“I [am] obliged to recur ultimately to my habitual anodyne, "I feel: therefore I exist." I feel bodies which are not myself: there are other existencies then. I call them "matter". I feel them changing place. This gives me "motion". Where there is an absence of matter, I call it "void", or "nothing", or "immaterial space". On the basis of sensation, of matter and motion, we may erect the fabric of all the certainties we can have or need.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“A nation which expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, expects that which never was and never will be.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“Do not bite at the bait of pleasure till you know there is no hook beneath it.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“You are now old enough to know how very important to your future life will be the manner in which you employ your present time”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws of Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
