“Nothing was or is farther from my intentions, than to enlist myself as the champion of a fixed opinion, where I have only expressed doubt.”
―
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. "
―
Thomas Jefferson
“I am conscious that an equal division of property is impracticable. But the consequences of this enormous inequality [in Europe] producing so much misery to the bulk of mankind, legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property,...[One] means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“...as we advance in life these things fall off one by one , and I suspect we are left with only Homer and Virgil, perhaps with only Homer alone.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“A nation which expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, expects that which never was and never will be.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy but cannot disjoin them.”
―
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.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“Health, learning and virtue will ensure your happiness; they will give
you a quiet conscience, private esteem and public honour.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“It is while we are young that the habit of industry is formed. If not then, it never is afterward.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
“I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all.”
―
Thomas Jefferson
