Jefferson Quotes

That liberty [is pure] which is to go to all, and not to the few or the rich alone. (to Horatio Gates, 1798) ~ Thomas Jefferson

Jefferson appeared to his enemies as an American version of Candide; Hamilton as an American Machiavelli. ~ Joseph J. Ellis

My most earnest wish is to see the republican element of popular control pushed to the maximum of its practicable exercise. I shall then believe that our government may be pure and perpetual. ~ Thomas Jefferson

When logic and proportion have fallen sloppy dead
And the white knight is talking backwards
And the red queen's off with her head
Remember what the dormouse said
Feed your head, feed your head ~ Grace Slick - Jefferson Airplane

Even though there are few to no credible passages - properly interpreted - in Scripture that call things such as alcohol and tattoos utterly sinful, some fundamentalists insist they are. ~ Jefferson Bethke

The firmness with which the (American) people have withstood the ... abuses of the press, the discernment they have manifested between truth and falsehood, show that they may safely be trusted to hear everything true and false and to form a correct judgment between them. ~ Thomas Jefferson

173 despots would surely be as oppressive as one," wrote Jefferson in 1785 in his Notes on the State of Virginia. "An elective despotism was not the government we fought for."31 ~ Gordon S. Wood

John Adams and Thomas Jefferson corresponded for 13 years before they died on the same day. They asked, "How can one have prosperity without commerce? How can one have commerce without luxury? How can one have luxury without corruption? How can you have corruption without the end of the Republic?" And they really didn't know the answer. ~ Pete Seeger

Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances. ~ Thomas Jefferson

But every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. ~ Thomas Jefferson

I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens who, reading newspapers, live and die in the belief that they have known something of what has been passing in their times. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Why should the Eisenhower memorial be over twice the size of WWII Memorial? Why should it be so vast as to comfortably house two Lincoln Memorials, two Washington Monuments, and two Jefferson Memorials - all six at once? ~ Leon Krier

Most of the time we're persecuted not because we love Jesus, but because we're prideful, arrogant jerks who don't love the real Jesus. We're often judgmental, hypocritical, and legalistic while claiming to follow a Jesus who is forgiving, authentic, and loving. Sometimes people will hate us because we preach the same gospel Jesus preached, and sometimes people will hate us because we're jerks. Let's not do the second one and blame it on the first. ~ Jefferson Bethke

we declared that an attack on any one colony should be considered as an attack on the whole. This ~ Thomas Jefferson

The foundation on which (our government is) built is the natural equality of man, the denial of every pre-eminence but that annexed to legal office, and particularly the denial of a pre-eminence by birth. ~ 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? ~ Thomas Jefferson

Jefferson said he only read the advertisements in the newspaper, because it was there he was most likely to find the truth. ~ Harold Holzer

If thinking men would have the courage to think for themselves, and to speak what they think, it would be found they do not differ in religious opinions as much as is supposed. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Basically [Louise] Brandeis was a Jeffersonian. And you say the timing is great, and it is in a lot of senses, except not for [Tomas] Jefferson, because this is a Hamiltonian moment, and he's the rock star of the minute with a great musical. ~ Jeffrey Rosen

The inquisition of public opinion overwhelms in practice the freedom asserted by the laws in theory. ~ Thomas Jefferson

[We should be] determined ... to sever ourselves from the union we so much value rather than give up the rights of self-government ... in which alone we see liberty, safety and happiness. ~ Thomas Jefferson

But this does not detract from the wisdom of his faith in the people and his constant insistence that they be left to manage their own affairs. His opposition to bureaucracy will bear careful analysis, and the country could stand a great deal more of its application. The trouble with us is that we talk about Jefferson but do not follow him. In his theory that the people should manage their government, and not be managed by it, he was everlastingly right. ~ Calvin Coolidge

Let no one drag you so low as to hate them"
-Martin Luther King Jr. ~ Elle Jefferson

Chemistry is yet, indeed, a mere embryon. Its principles are contested; experiments seem contradictory; their subjects are so minute as to escape our senses; and their result too fallacious to satisfy the mind. It is probably an age too soon to propose the establishment of a system. ~ Thomas Jefferson

It is not to the moderation and justice of others we are to trust for fair and equal access to market with out productions, or for our due share in the transportation of them; but to our own means of independence, and the firm will to use them. ~ Thomas Jefferson

We've lost the real Jesus - or at least exchanged him for a newer, safer, sanitized, ineffectual one. We've created a Christian subculture that comes with its own set of customs, rules, rituals, paradigms, and products that are nowhere near the rugged, revolutionary faith of biblical Christianity. In our subculture Jesus would have never been crucified - he's too nice. ~ Jefferson Bethke

Ryan was a nose away from the tallest cake on display, a six-foot-high chocolate masterpiece Jesse and I had created for this year's fairs. Detailed water nymph's interspersed with insects and toadstools, all sculpted by hand in rich dark chocolate. ~ Anouska Knight

Peace is our passion. ~ Thomas Jefferson

The problem with trying to be relevant is it makes us copy what culture is already doing. To be relevant, you have to copy what is cool. So we put our mouths on the tailpipe of secular culture in hopes we can recycle some of it and use it for ourselves. The problem with this is that it automatically puts us ten to fifteen years behind culture because rather than setting the precedent, we are copying their systems. This is where we get a huge section of Christian apparel and coffee mugs that simply copy secular logos. My favorite is the shirt with the words "Holy Spirit" printed in the same font and logo as Sprite. Or the one with "A bread crumb and a fish" instead of Abercrombie and Fitch. We call it redeeming, but it's actually stealing. Making bad art is bad in and of itself, but if we are Christians, this takes on a whole other level of weight. Because we are called to mirror and reflect God, everything we do should give people a proper picture of who he is. ~ Jefferson Bethke

America has always been torn between the ideal and the real, between noble goals and inevitable compromises. So was Jefferson. In his head and in his heart, as in the nation itself, the perfect warred with the good, the intellectual with the visceral. ~ Jon Meacham

Merchants have no country. ~ Thomas Jefferson

I am satisfied, and sufficiently occupied with the things which are, without tormenting or troubling myself about those which may indeed be, but of which I have no evidence. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Music, drawing, books, invention & exercise will be so many resources to you against ennui. ~ Thomas Jefferson

I'd thought that when I started to follow Jesus, things were supposed to get better. If that was true, why was it getting worse? Why did it hurt more instead of less? Maybe it's because when we're dead, we can't feel anything. But once we're alive, that means our senses are too. Can a dead person feel chaos? ~ Jefferson Bethke

This society [Jesuits] has been a greater calamity to mankind than the French Revolution, or Napoleon's despotism or ideology. It has obstructed the progress of reformation and the improvement of the human mind in society much longer and more fatally.

{Letter to Thomas Jefferson, November 4, 1816. Adams wrote an anonymous 4 volume work on the destructive history of the Jesuits} ~ John Adams

There is no such thing as helplessness. It's just another word for giving up. ~ Jefferson Smith

The genius of architecture seems to have shed its maledictions over this land. ~ Thomas Jefferson

I wish I was a despot that I might save the noble, the beautiful trees that are daily falling sacrifice to the cupidity of their owners, or the necessity of the poor. The unnecessary felling of a tree, perhaps the growth of centuries, seems to me a crime little short of murder. ~ Thomas Jefferson

All things here appear to me to trudge on in one and the same round: we rise in the morning that we may eat breakfast, dinner andsupper and to bed again that we may get up the next morning and do the same: so that you never saw two peas more alike than our yesterday and to-day. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Although we are free by the law, we are not so in practice. ~ Thomas Jefferson

The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them, in-as-much as he who knows nothing is nearer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehood and errors. ~ Thomas Jefferson

For thirty-six of the forty years between 1800 and 1840, either Jefferson or a self-described adherent of his served as president of the United States: James Madison, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, and Martin Van Buren.32 (John Quincy Adams, a one-term president, was the single exception.) ~ Jon Meacham

We shall all consider ourselves unauthorized to saddle posterity with our debts, and morally bound to pay them ourselves; and consequently within what may be deemed the period of a generation, or the life of the majority. ~ Thomas Jefferson

He alone who walks strict and upright, and who, in matters of opinion, will be contented that others should be as free as himself and acquiesce when his opinion is freely overruled, will attain his object in the end. ~ Thomas Jefferson

A determination never to do what is wrong, prudence, and good-humor, will go far toward securing to you the estimation of the world. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Industry, commerce and security are the surest roads to the happiness and prosperity of people. ~ Thomas Jefferson

War is not the best engine for us to resort to; nature has given us one in our commerce, which if properly managed, will be a better instrument for obliging the interested nations of Europe to treat us with justice. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Screw you, you sons of bitches. I may be just a goddamn Jew Red to you, but I'm keeping Jefferson alive! ~ I. F. Stone

The evidence of [the] natural right [of expatriation], like that of our right to life, liberty, the use of our faculties, the pursuit of happiness, is not left to the feeble and sophistical investigations of reason, but is impressed on the sense of every man. We do not claim these under the charters of kings or legislators, but under the King of Kings. ~ Thomas Jefferson

If we cannot secure all our rights, let us secure what we can. ~ Thomas Jefferson

The colleges of Edinburgh and Geneva as seminaries of science, are considered as the two eyes of Europe. While Great Britain and America give the preference to the former, all other countries give it to the latter. ~ Thomas Jefferson

The evils of war are great in their endurance, and have a long reckoning for ages to come. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Of the six men who have done most to make America the wonder and the joy she is to all of us, not one could be the citizen of a government so constituted; for Washington and Franklin and Jefferson, certainly the three mightiest leaders in our early history, were heretics in their day, Deists, as men called them; and Garrison and Lincoln and Sumner, certainly the three mightiest in these later times, would all be disfranchised by the proposed amendment. Lincoln could not have taken the oath of office had such a clause been in the Constitution. ~ John Chadwick

Do you know what a myth is, Jefferson?" I asked him. "A myth is an old lie that people believe in. White people believe that they're better than anyone else on earth--and that's a myth. The last thing they ever want is to see a black man stan, and think, and show that common humanity that is in us all. It would destroy their myth. They would no longer have justification of having made us slaves and keeping us in the condition we are in. As long as none of us stand, they're safe. They're safe with me. They're safe with Reverend Ambrose. I don't want them to feel safe with you anymore. ~ Ernest J. Gaines

The United States has already passed on as the world's economic leader. Having flouted Thomas Jefferson for too long, America has succumbed to public debt, the 'fore horse for oppression and despotism,' after which 'taxation will follow, and in its train wretchedness and oppression. ~ Ilana Mercer

Every one must act according to the dictates of his own reason, and mine tells me that civil powers alone have been given to the President of the United States, and no authority to direct the religious exercises of his constituents. ~ Thomas Jefferson

The priests of the different religious sects . . . dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight, and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subdivision of the duperies on which they live. - THOMAS JEFFERSON ~ Richard Dawkins

God should get a lot more glory for things than we give him. ~ Jefferson Bethke

We stand in the shadow of Jefferson who believed that a society founded upon the rule of law and liberty was dependent upon public education and the diffusion of knowledge. ~ Matt Blunt

The juries are our judges of all fact, and of law when they choose it. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Jefferson the deist was accused of being an atheist and even a Muslim. ~ Karen Armstrong

It is error alone that needs the support of government.2 Truth can stand by itself. - THOMAS JEFFERSON, on freedom of religion ~ Jon Meacham

The bridge between failure and success is hope. THOMAS JEFFERSON ~ Dave Ramsey

I wish that the founders had had the foresight to hang on to and enshrine another one of Independence Hall's chairs, the one that Benjamin Rush mentioned in a letter to John Adams about how Thomas Jefferson objected when his colleagues in the Continental Congress considered a fast day, which Jefferson pooh-poohed as too religious. Rush reminded Adams, 'You rose and defended the motion, and in reply to Mr. Jefferson's objections to Christianity you said you were sorry to hear such sentiments …. You suspected, you told me, that you had offended him, but that he soon convinced you to the contrary by crossing the room and taking a seat in the chair next to you.'

Who knows what happened to that particular chair. … But it might have been a more helpful, sobering symbolic object than that chair with the rising sun. Then perhaps citizens making pilgrimages to Independence Hall could file past the chair Jefferson walked across an aisle to sit in, and we could all ponder the amount of respect, affection, and wishy-washy give-and-take needed to keep a house divided in reasonable repair. ~ Sarah Vowell

To say that we have to surrender to judicial supremacy is to do what Jefferson warned against, which is, in essence, surrender to judicial tyranny. ~ Mike Huckabee

The man who stops advertising to save money is like the man who stops the clock to save time. ~ Thomas Jefferson

There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me. ~ 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. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Who would think it possible to redirect historical scholarship by explaining what Thomas Jefferson said in the Declaration of Independence? ~ Edmund Morgan

There is something so pure and frank and noble about Him that to doubt His sincerity would be like doubting the brightness of the sun. ~ Charles Edward Jefferson

There is not a single crowned head in Europe whose talents or merit would entitle him to be elected a vestryman by the people of any parish in America. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Material abundance without character is the surest way to destruction. ~ Thomas Jefferson

If the children are untaught, their ignorance and vices will in future life cost us much dearer in their consequences than it would have done in their correction by a good education. ~ Thomas Jefferson

I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world and do not find in our particular superstition [Christianity] one redeeming feature. ~ Thomas Jefferson

The flames kindled on the Fourth of July, 1776, have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism; on the contrary, they will consume these engines and all who work them. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson once said that all men are created equal ( ... ). There is a tendency ( ... ) for certain people to use this phrase out of context, to satisfy all conditions. The most ridiculous example I can think of is that the people who run public education promote the stupid and idle along with the industrious-because all men are created equal, educators will gravely tell you, the children left behind suffer terrible feelings of inferiority. We know all men are not created equal in the sense some people would have us believe-some people are smarter than others, some people have more opportunity because they're born with it, some men make more money than others, some ladies make better cakes than others-some people are born gifted beyond the normal scope of most men. ~ Harper Lee

Men are disposed to live honestly, if the means of doing so are open to them. ~ Thomas Jefferson

One of my favorite things about following Jesus is I get to drop the act, admit I'm not good enough, walk in freedom-and that's good news. ~ Jefferson Bethke

I am not myself apt to be alarmed at innovations recommended by reason. That dread belongs to those whose interests or prejudices shrink from the advance of truth and science. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Sometimes how we dialogue in today's culture is just as important as why we dialogue. ~ Jefferson Bethke

If anything pass in a religious meeting seditiously and contrary to the public peace, let it be punished in the same manner and no otherwise than as if it had happened in a fair or market. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Our bills shall not be killed. ~ Thomas Jefferson

[Tomas] Jefferson is more out of fashion, both because of his views on race, where he's properly questioned, that part of his legacy, but also because the libertarian critique of bigness in business and government, the idea that size is a danger is something that's shared on the right when it comes to government and on the left when it comes to corporations, but not both. ~ Jeffrey Rosen

Finally, at one p.m. on Tuesday, February 17, 180161, on the thirty-sixth ballot, Jefferson prevailed. R ~ Jon Meacham

If virtuous, the government need not fear the fair operation of attack and defense. Nature has given to man no other means of sifting the truth, either in religion, law, or politics. ~ Thomas Jefferson

We abhor the follies of war, and are not untried in its distresses and calamities. Unmeddling with the affairs of other nations, we had hoped that our distance and our dispositions would have left us free, in the example and indulgence of peace with all the world. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Well," I say, "we're practically there."
"Where?" says Jefferson.
"The future. ~ Chris Weitz

Altho' I rarely waste time in reading on theological subjects, as mangled by our Pseudo-Christians, yet I can readily suppose Basanistos may be amusing. Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus. If it could be understood it would not answer their purpose. Their security is in their faculty of shedding darkness, like the scuttlefish, thro' the element in which they move, and making it impenetrable to the eye of a pursuing enemy, and there they will skulk.
[Letter to Francis Adrian Van der Kemp on 30 July 1810 denouncing the Christian doctrine of the Trinity] ~ Thomas Jefferson

My God, is this a date?" Jeff had asked when I asked if I could bring her along.
"I don't know," I said. "She might still be happily lesbian. ~ Jefferson Bass

The human character, we believe, requires in general constant and immediate control to prevent its being biased from right by the seductions of self-love. ~ Thomas Jefferson

It has also been a great solace to me, to believe that you are engaged in vindicating to posterity the course we have pursued for preserving to them, in all their purity, the blessings of self-government, which we had assisted too in acquiring for them. If ever the earth has beheld a system of administration conducted with a single and steadfast eye to the general interest and happiness of those committed to it, one which, protected by truth, can never know reproach, it is that to which our lives have been devoted. ~ Thomas Jefferson

It is highly interesting to our country, and it is the duty of its functionaries, to provide that every citizen in it should receive an education proportioned to the condition and pursuits of his life. ~ Thomas Jefferson

My general plan would be to make the States one as to everything connected with foreign nations and several as to everything purely domestic. ~ Thomas Jefferson

To evoke another great phrase of the American revolutionary heritage - widely though inconclusively attributed to Thomas Jefferson - the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. Such a phrase is merely trite, however, unless we consider its deeper implications. For the French revolutionaries, as for so many regimes that have succeeded them across the world up to the present day, the call for vigilance against enemies, both external and internal, was the first step on the road to the loss of liberty, and lives.

Of far more significance, and the true and tragic lesson of the epic descent into The Terror, is the summons to vigilance against ourselves - that we should not assume that we are righteous, and our enemies evil; that we can see clearly, and to others are blinded by malice or folly; that we can abrogate the fragile rights of others in the name of our own certainty and all will be well regardless.

If we do not honor the message of human rights born in the revolutions of 1776 and 1786, as the French in their case most certainly failed to do, we too are on the road to The Terror. ~ David Andress

I think it is a great error to consider a heavy tax on wines as a tax on luxury. On the contrary, it is a tax on the health of our citizens. ~ Thomas Jefferson

The Constitution of most of our states (and of the United States) assert that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Man is an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all education in him. From his cradle to his grave he is learning to do what he sees others do. ~ Thomas Jefferson

The earth belongs always to the living generations. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Difficulties indeed sometimes arise; but common sense and honest intentions will generally steer through them. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Peace with all nations, and the right which that gives us with respect to all nations, are our object. ~ Thomas Jefferson