“I have often thought that if heaven had given me choice of my position and calling, it should have been on a rich spot of earth, well watered, and near a good market for the productions of the garden. No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no lucture comparable to that of the garden. Sucha a variety of subjeccts, some one always coming to perfection, the failure of one thing repaired by the succes of another, and instead of one harvest a continued one through the year. Under a total want of demand except for our family table, I am still devoted to the garden.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”
―
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
“While the art of printing is left to us science can never be retrograde; what is once acquired of real knowledge can never be lost.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“But every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, an hundred.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not an article for mere consumption, but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“A great deal of love given to a few is better than a little to many.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“Nothing was or is farther from my intentions, than to enlist myself as the champion of a fixed opinion, where I have only expressed doubt.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“I am satisfied, and sufficiently occupied with the things which are, without tormenting or troubling myself about those which may indeed be, but of which I have no evidence.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“If there is one principle more deeply rooted in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“We confide in our strength, without boasting of it, we respect that of others, without fearing it.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
