“Was the government to prescribe us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are now."
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Thomas Jefferson
“I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“Whiskey claims to itself alone the exclusive office of sot-making.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“A great deal of love given to a few is better than a little to many.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“In a republican nation, whose citizens are to be led by reason and persuasion and not by force, the art of reasoning becomes of first importance”
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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.
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Thomas Jefferson
“no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“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, by the grace of God. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollection of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“I'm a greater believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it”
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Thomas Jefferson
“I wish I was a despot that I might save the noble, the beautiful trees that are daily falling sacrifice to the cupidity of their owners, or the necessity of the poor. The unnecessary felling of a tree, perhaps the growth of centuries, seems to me a crime little short of murder.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“The Tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrant. It is its natural manure.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“Perceiving the order of nature to be that individual happiness shall be inseparable from the practice of virtue, I am willing to hope it may have ordained that the fall of the wicked shall be the rise of the good.
To J. Correa de Serra, Monticello, Apr. 19, 1814”
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Thomas Jefferson
“There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me.”
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Thomas Jefferson
