“The rights hereby asserted are of the natural rights of mankind, and that if any act shall be hereafter passed to repeal the present or to narrow its operation, such act will be an infringement of natural right.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“The bill for establishing religious freedom, the principles of which had, to a certain degree, been enacted before, I had drawn in all the latitude of reason & right. It still met with opposition; but, with some mutilations in the preamble, it was finally passed; and a singular proposition proved that it's protection of opinion was meant to be universal. 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.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“Do not bite at the bait of pleasure till you know there is no hook beneath it.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of Liberty.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“We confide in our strength, without boasting of it, we respect that of others, without fearing it.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“… the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them, inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“It was one of the rules which above all others made Doctr. Franklin the most amiable of men in society, "never to contradict anybody.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“It is neither wealth nor splendor; but tranquility and occupation which give you happiness.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“So inscrutable is the arrangement of causes and consequences in this world, that a two-penny duty on tea, unjustly imposed in a sequestered part of it, changes the condition of all its inhabitants.”
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Thomas Jefferson
