Tomas Jefferson Quotes

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

[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

That strain of anti-monopoly crusading egalitarianism really runs throughout American history from [Tomas] Jefferson to Woodrow Wilson, that finds its apotheosis in [Louis] Brandeis, continues through the New Deal, but then it sort of peters out in the '60s because progressives in particular become more interested in extending equality to minorities, and women, and other excluded groups, and little more suspicious of these old white guys, often from the south, who were crusaders against monopolies. ~ Jeffrey Rosen

[Louis] Brandeis, like [Tomas] Jefferson, is an equal opportunity critic of bigness. And he, like Jefferson, sees American history as this incredible clash between small producers, farmers, and small business people on the one hand, and wicked oligarchs and financiers and monopolists on the other. ~ Jeffrey Rosen

The care of human life and happiness, and their destruction is the first and only legitimate object of a good government. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Of all exercises, walking is the best. ~ Thomas Jefferson

A democratic society depends upon an informed and educated citizenry. ~ Thomas Jefferson

He who is permitted by law to have no property of his own, can with difficulty conceive that property is founded in anything but force. ~ Thomas Jefferson

In the wake of the British army's burning of the roughly 3,000 books belonging to Congress at Washington, Jefferson offered to sell the nation his own collection.42 There were 6,487 volumes in Jefferson's hands; in the words of the National Intelligencer, the library "for its selection, rarity and intrinsic value, is beyond all price."43,44 They formed the core of the new Library of Congress. ~ Jon Meacham

Newspapers ... serve as chimnies to carry off noxious vapors and smoke. ~ Thomas Jefferson

The result of your fifty or sixty years of religious reading in the four words: 'Be just and good,' is that in which all our enquiries must end. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Being myself a warm zealot for the attainment & enjoiment by all mankind of as much liberty as each may exercise without injury to the equal liberty of his fellow citizens, I have lamented that in France the endeavors to obtain this should have been attended with the effusion of so much blood. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Whiskey claims to itself alone the exclusive office of sot-making. ~ Thomas Jefferson

I believe that Thomas Jefferson said: 'If it neither breaks my leg nor picks my pocket, what difference is it to me?' ~ Glenn Beck

I apprehend ... that the total abandonment of the principle of rotation in the offices of President and Senator will end in abuse. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Stock dealers and banking companies, by the aid of a paper system, are enriching themselves to the ruin of our country, and swaying the government by their possession of the printing presses, which their wealth commands and by any other means, not always honorable to the character of our countrymen. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Both Jefferson and Madison remained convinced to the end of their lives that all parts of America's government had equal authority to interpret the fundamental law of the Constitution - all departments had what Madison called a concurrent right to expound the constitution. ~ Gordon S. Wood

Books are better than television, the internet, or the computer for educating and maintaining freedom.
Books matter because they state ideas and then attempt to thoroughly prove them. They have an advantage precisely because they slow down the process, allowing the reader to internalize, respond, react and transform. The ideas in books matter because time is taken to establish truth, and because the reader must take the time to consider each idea and either accept it or, if he rejects it, to think through sound reasons for doing so. A nation of people who write and read is a nation with the attention span to earn an education and free society if they choose. ~ Oliver DeMille

The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Even at the age of eight she would fall asleep by pressing one hand into the other and making believe she was holding the hand of the man whom she loved, the man of her life. So if in her sleep she pressed Tomas hand with such tenacity, we can understand why: she had been training since childhood. ~ Milan Kundera

Death stoops over me.
I'm a problem in chess. He
has the solution. ~ Tomas Transtromer

On the dogmas of religion, as distinguished from moral principles, all mankind, from the beginning of the world to this day, have been quarreling, fighting, burning and torturing one another for abstractions unintelligible to themselves and to all others, and absolutely beyond the comprehension of the human mind. Thomas Jefferson, U.S. President, author, scientist, architect, educator, and diplomat ~ George Washington

The monopoly of a single bank is certainly an evil. The multiplication of them was intended to cure it; but it multiplied an influence of the same character with the first, and completed the supplanting the precious metals by a paper circulation. Between such parties the less we meddle the better. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Jefferson, incidentally, was also a great adventurer with foods. Among his many other accomplishments, he was the first person in America to slice potatoes lengthwise and fry them. So as well as being the author of the Declaration of Independence, he was also the father of the American French fry. ~ Bill Bryson

For the system of government you fashioned including the very principles on which you based it, is increasingly obsolete, and hence increasingly, if inadvertently, oppressive and dangerous to our welfare. It must be radically changed and a new system of government invented, a democracy for the 21st century. For this wisdom, above all, I thank Mr. Jefferson who helped create the system that served us so well for so long, and that now must, in its turn, die and be replaced. ~ Newt Gingrich

No part of the regular school day was set aside for religious worship…. Jefferson did not permit the room belonging to the university to be used for religious purposes. ~ Leonard W. Levy

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

The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest his (sic)patient in the care of the human frame, in diet and in the cause and prevention of disease ~ Thomas Jefferson

It has been thought that the people are not competent electors of judges learned in the law. But I do not know this to be true, and, if doubtful, we should follow principle. ~ Thomas Jefferson

I have a right to nothing which another has a right to take away. ~ Thomas Jefferson

The cornerstone of democracy rests on the foundation of an educated electorate. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Our duty to ourselves, to posterity, and to mankind, call on us
by every motive which is sacred or honorable, to watch over the safety of our beloved country
during the troubles which agitate and convulse the residue of the world, and to sacrifice to
that all personal and local considerations. ~ Thomas Jefferson

The past is dead; let it bury its dead, its hopes and its aspirations; before you lies the future-a future full of golden promise. ~ Jefferson Davis

I pledge undying hostility to any government restrictions on the free minds of the people. ~ Thomas Jefferson

The general (federal) government will tend to monarchy, which will fortify itself from day to day, instead of working its own cures. ~ Thomas Jefferson

< ... > many national leaders including Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, John Adams, John Jay, Gouverneur Morris, and Rufus King saw American slavery as an immense problem, a curse, a blight, or a national disease. If the degree of their revulsion varied, they agreed that the nation would be much safer, purer, happier, and better off without the racial slavery that they had inherited from previous generations and, some of them would emphasize, from England. Most of them also believed that America would be an infinitely better and less complicated place without the African American population, which most white leaders associated with all the defects, mistakes, sins, shortcomings, and animality of an otherwise almost perfect nation. ~ David Brion Davis

All through your life, you'll be faced with making a decision between two things-choose the one that is right. If they are both right, then choose the one that will make you feel the best about it at the end of the day. ~ Thomas Jefferson