“The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“We in America do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“The art of life is the art of avoiding pain; and he is the best pilot, who steers clearest of the rocks and shoals with which it is beset.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“There is a ripeness of time for death,
regarding others as well as ourselves, when it is reasonable we should drop off, and make room for
another growth. When we have lived our generation out, we should not wish to encroach on another.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man! Who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment and death itself in vindication of his own liberty, and the next moment . . . inflict on his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“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.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“I have the consolation of having added nothing to my private fortune during my public service, and of retiring with hands clean as they are empty.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“The happiest moments of my life have been the few which I have passed at home in the bosom of my family.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“A morsel of genuine history is a thing so rare as to be always valuable.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“Politics, like religion, hold up the torches of martyrdom to the reformers of error.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
