“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
“Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“I cannot live without books: but fewer will suffice where amusement, and not use, is the only future object.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“The opinions and beliefs of men follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to their minds.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“Were I to undertake to answer the calumnies of the newspapers, it would be more than all my own time, and that of 20 aids could effect. For while I should be answering one, twenty new ones would be invented. I have thought it better to trust the justice of my country-men, that they would judge me by what they see of my conduct on the stage where they have placed me.”
―
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
“There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.”
―
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
“I set out on this ground, which I suppose to be self-evident, that the dart belongs in usufruct to the living.”
―
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
“Everything is useful which contributes to fix in the principles and practices of virtue.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
