“When once we quit the basis of sensation, all is in the wind. To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of materialism by Locke, Tracy, and Stewart.
―
Thomas Jefferson
“I haven't failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that don't work.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude
from achieving his goal.
Nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong attitude.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“You seem to consider the 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. Our judges are as honest as other men, and not more so. They have, with others, the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps.... Their power [is] the more dangerous as they are in office for life, and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“May I never get too busy in my own affairs that I fail to respond to the needs of others with kindness and compassion.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“It is while we are young that the habit of industry is formed. If not then, it never is afterward.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“To the corruptions of Christianity I am, indeed opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian, in the only sense in which he wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“It is reasonable that everyone who asks justice should do justice”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“Enlighten the people, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
