“...vast accession of strength from their younger recruits, who having nothing in them of the feelings or principles of ’76 now look to a single and splendid government of an Aristocracy, founded on banking institutions and monied in corporations under the guise and cloak of their favored branches of manufactures commerce and navigation, riding and ruling over the plundered ploughman and beggared yeomanry.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“The greatest service which can be rendered any country is to add a useful plant to its culture.
―
Thomas Jefferson
“When describing the University of Virginia: Here, We are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“If you want something you've never had
You must be willing to do something you've never done.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened. --”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“when you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on”
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Thomas Jefferson
“May it [American independence] be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government. That form which we have substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately... These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.
―
Thomas Jefferson
“All that is necessary for a student is access to a library.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“I had rather be shut up in a very modest cottage with my books, my family and a few old friends, dining on simple bacon, and letting the world roll on as it liked, than to occupy the most splendid post, which any human power can give.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“Resolved ... that it would be a dangerous delusion were a confidence in the men of our choice to silence our fears for the safety of our rights: that confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism — free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence;”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“When the people fear the government there is tyranny, when the government fears the people there is liberty.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
