“The pretense that the workings of the mind, like the actions of the body, are subject to the control of laws, does not seem sufficiently demolished. ... The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“I hope we shall ... crush in it’s birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and to bid defiance to the laws of their country.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“[n regard to Jesus believing himself inspired]
This belief carried no more personal imputation than the belief of Socrates that he was under the care and admonition of a guardian demon. And how many of our wisest men still believe in the reality of these inspirations while perfectly sane on all other subjects (Works, Vol. iv, p. 327).”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“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
“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
“History, in general, only informs us what bad government is.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“I [am] obliged to recur ultimately to my habitual anodyne, "I feel: therefore I exist." I feel bodies which are not myself: there are other existencies then. I call them "matter". I feel them changing place. This gives me "motion". Where there is an absence of matter, I call it "void", or "nothing", or "immaterial space". On the basis of sensation, of matter and motion, we may erect the fabric of all the certainties we can have or need.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.”
―
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
“A coward is much more exposed to quarrels than a man of spirit.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“Nothing is more likely than that [the] enumeration of powers is defective. This is the ordinary case of all human works. Let us then go on perfecting it by adding by way of amendment to the Constitution those powers which time and trial show are still wanting”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“But every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“It is neither wealth nor splendor; but tranquility and occupation which give you happiness.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
