“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
“It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“[It is a] happy truth that man is capable of self-government, and only rendered otherwise by the moral degradation designedly superinduced on him by the wicked acts of his tyrant.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“The contest is not between Us and Them, but between Good and Evil, and if those who would fight Evil adopt the ways of Evil, Evil wins.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“never trust a man who won't accept that there is more than one way to spell a word
Paraphrased”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“As Thomas Jefferson proclaimed, “In matters of fashion, swim with the current. In matters of conscience, stand like a rock.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“Bigotry is the disease of ignorance, of morbid minds; enthusiasm of the free and buoyant. Education and free discussion are the antidotes of both. We are destined to be a barrier against the returns of ignorance and barbarism. Old Europe will have to lean on our shoulders, and to hobble along by our side, under the monkish trammels of priests and kings, as she can. What a Colossus shall we be when the Southern continent comes up to our mark! What a stand will it secure as a ralliance for the reason & freedom of the globe! I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past. So good night. I will dream on, always fancying that Mrs Adams and yourself are by my side marking the progress and the obliquities of ages and countries.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened. --”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“It is while we are young that the habit of industry is formed. If not then, it never is afterward.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“I believe that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me.”
―
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
