“Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“A nation which expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, expects that which never was and never will be.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“I set out on this ground, which I suppose to be self-evident, that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“our civil rights have no dependance on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry; that therefore the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right; that it tends also to corrupt the principles of that very religion it is meant to encourage,”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of . . . but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independent stand we are compelled to take.”
―
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
“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
“Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is Just”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“Altho' I rarely waste time in reading on theological subjects, as mangled by our Pseudo-Christians, yet I can readily suppose Basanistos may be amusing. Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus. If it could be understood it would not answer their purpose. Their security is in their faculty of shedding darkness, like the scuttlefish, thro' the element in which they move, and making it impenetrable to the eye of a pursuing enemy, and there they will skulk.
―
Thomas Jefferson
“Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude
from achieving his goal.
Nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong attitude.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest. Only aim to do your duty, and mankind will give you credit where you fail.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send 150 lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, & talk by the hour? That 150 lawyers should do business together ought not to be expected.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
