“The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy but cannot disjoin them.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“The greatest service which can be rendered any country is to add a useful plant to its culture.
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Thomas Jefferson
“we commit honest maniacs to Bedlam, so judges should be withdrawn from their bench, whose erroneous biases are leading us to dissolution.”
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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.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of people that these liberties are the gift of God?”
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Thomas Jefferson
“If once the people become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors, shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“Any Government strong enough to give you what you want, is a Government strong enough to take everything you have!”
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Thomas Jefferson
“I am convinced our own happiness requires that we should continue to mix with the world, and to keep pace with it as it goes. "
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Thomas Jefferson
“Our Revolution commenced on more favorable ground. It presented us an album on which we were free to write what we pleased. We had no occasion to search into musty records, to hunt up royal parchments, or to investigate the laws and institutions of a semi-barbarous ancestry. We appealed to those of nature, and found them engraved on our hearts. Yet we did not avail ourselves of all the advantages of our position. We had never been permitted to exercise self-government. When forced to assume it, we were novices in its science. Its principles and forms had entered little into our former education. We established however some, although not all its important principles. The constitutions of most of our States assert, that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves, in all cases to which they think themselves competent, (as in electing their functionaries executive and legislative, and deciding by a jury of themselves, in all judiciary cases in which any fact is involved,) or they may act by representatives, freely and equally chosen; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed; that they are entitled to freedom of person, freedom of religion, freedom of property, and freedom of the press.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“It is neither wealth nor splendor; but tranquility and occupation which give you happiness.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents.”
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Thomas Jefferson
