“A coward is much more exposed to quarrels than a man of spirit.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“A government which can be felt; a government of energy. God send that our country may never have a government, which it can feel.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“Nobody is better than you and remember, you are better than nobody.
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Thomas Jefferson
“The main objects of all science, the freedom and happiness of man. . . . [are] the sole objects of all legitimate government.
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Thomas Jefferson
“We have no right to prejudice another in his civil enjoyments because he is of another church.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“The majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“The opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“Some are whigs, liberals, democrats, call them what you please. Others are tories, serviles, aristocrats, &c. The latter fear the people, and wish to transfer all power to the higher classes of society; the former consider the people as the safest depository of power in the last resort; they cherish them therefore, and wish to leave in them all the powers to the exercise of which they are competent.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“When once we quit the basis of sensation, all is in the wind. To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of materialism by Locke, Tracy, and Stewart.
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Thomas Jefferson
“What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man! Who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment and death itself in vindication of his own liberty, and the next moment . . . inflict on his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses.”
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Thomas Jefferson
“I have no ambition to govern men; it is a painful and thankless office.”
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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
