“A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have
―
Thomas Jefferson
“Neither Pagan nor Mahamedan nor Jew ought to be excluded from the civil rights of the Commonwealth because of his religion. -quoting John Locke's argument.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“When the subject is strong, simplicity is the only way to treat it.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“There exists indeed an opposition to it [building of UVA, Jefferson's secular college] by the friends of William and Mary, which is not strong. The most restive is that of the priests of the different religious sects, who dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of day-light; and scowl on it the fatal harbinger announcing the subversion of the duperies on which they live. In this the Presbyterian clergy take the lead. The tocsin is sounded in all their pulpits, and the first alarm denounced is against the particular creed of Doctr. Cooper; and as impudently denounced as if they really knew what it is.
―
Thomas Jefferson
“He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws of Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“Do you want to know who you are? Don't ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“We have no right to prejudice another in his civil enjoyments because he is of another church.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved - the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced! With the rational respect that is due to it, knavish priests have added prostitutions of it, that fill or might fill the blackest and bloodiest pages of human history.
―
Thomas Jefferson
“New York, like London, seems to be a cloacina [toilet] of all the depravities of human nature.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“It is the duty of every American citizen to take part in a vigorous debate on the issues of the day.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“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
“It is an axiom in my mind, that our liberty can never be safe but in the hands of the people themselves, and that too of the people with a certain degree of instruction. This it is the business of the State to effect, and on a general plan.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
