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Thomas Jefferson Quotes and Quotation


(April 13, 1743–July 4, 1826) ''Third President of the United States, political philosopher, primary author of the

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  • I had rather be shut up in a very modest cottage with my books, my family and a few old friends, dining on simple bacon, and letting the world roll on as it liked, than to occupy the most splendid post, which any human power can give.
    • Letter to Alexander Donald (February 7, 1788)

  • Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.
    • Letter to Richard Price (January 8, 1789)

  • I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.
    • Letter to Archibald Stuart (1791)

  • Delay is preferable to error.
  • It was by the sober sense of our citizens that we were safely and steadily conducted from monarchy to republicanism, and it is by the same agency alone we can be kept from falling back.
    • Letter to Arthur Campbell (1797)

  • "Resolved ... that it would be a dangerous delusion were a confidence in the men of our choice to silence our fears for the safety of our rights: that confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism — free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence;"
    • Kentucky Resolution (November 16, 1798)

  • To preserve the freedom of the human mind then and freedom of the press, every spirit should be ready to devote itself to martyrdom; for as long as we may think as we will, and speak as we think, the condition of man will proceed in improvement.
    • Letter to William Green Mumford (June 18, 1799)

  • '''I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.
    • Letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush (Sept. 23,1800)

  • Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.
    • First Inaugural Address (March 4, 1801)

  • All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be rightful, must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal laws must protect, and to violate which would be oppression.
    • First Inaugural Address (March 4, 1801)

  • I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies . . . If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] . . . will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered . . . The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.
    • Letter to the Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin (1802) ; later published in The Debate Over The Recharter Of The Bank Bill (1809)

  • There is no act, however virtuous, for which ingenuity may not find some bad motive.
  • Letter to Edward Dowse (April 19, 1803)

  • Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle.
    • Letter to John Norvell (June 11, 1807)

  • I have often thought that nothing would do more extensive good at small expense than the establishment of a small circulating library in every county, to consist of a few well-chosen books, to be lent to the people of the country under regulations as would secure their safe return in due time."
    • Letter to John Wyche (May 19, 1809)

  • The hour of emancipation is advancing. . . this enterprise is for the young; for those who can follow it up, and bear it through to it's consummation. It shall have all my prayers, and these are the only weapons of an old man.
    • Letter to Edward Coles, August 25 (1814)

  • I am really mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, a fact like this can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too, as an offence against religion; that a question about the sale of a book can be carried before the civil magistrate. Is this then our freedom of religion? and are we to have a censor whose imprimatur shall say what books may be sold, and what we may buy? And who is thus to dogmatize religious opinions for our citizens? Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched? Is a priest to be our inquisitor, or shall a layman, simple as ourselves, set up his reason as the rule for what we are to read, and what we must believe? It is an insult to our citizens to question whether they are rational beings or not, and blasphemy against religion to suppose it cannot stand the test of truth and reason.
    • Letter to N. G. Dufief, Philadelphia bookseller (1814) who had been prosecuted for selling the book Sur la Création du Monde, un Systême d'Organisation Primitive by M. de Becourt, which Jefferson himself had purchased.

  • Self-interest, or rather self-love, or egoism, has been more plausibly substituted as the basis of morality. But I consider our relations with others as constituting the boundaries of morality. With ourselves, we stand on the ground of identity, not of relation, which last, requiring two subjects, excludes self-love confined to a single one. To ourselves, in strict language, we can owe no duties, obligation requiring also two parties. Self-love, therefore, is no part of morality. Indeed, it is exactly its counterpart.
    • Letter to Thomas Law (1814)

  • I cannot live without books.
    • Letter to John Adams (June 10, 1815)

  • If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.
    • Letter to Colonel Charles Yancey (January 6, 1816)

  • I, however, place economy among the first and most important republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared.
    • Letter to William Plumer (July 21, 1816)

  • Bigotry is the disease of ignorance, of morbid minds; enthusiasm of the free and buoyant. Education & free discussion are the antidotes of both.
    • Letter to John Adams, (August 1, 1816)

  • There is an error into which most of the speculators on government have fallen, and which the well-known state of society of our Indians ought, before now, to have corrected. In their hypothesis of the origin of government, they suppose it to have commenced in the patriarchal or monarchical form. Our Indians are evidently in that state of nature which has passed the association of a single family... The Cherokees, the only tribe I know to be contemplating the establishment of regular laws, magistrates, and government, propose a government of representatives, elected from every town. But of all things, they least think of subjecting themselves to the will of one man.
    • Letter to Francis W. Gilmer (1816)

  • Lay down true principles and adhere to them inflexibly. Do not be frightened into their surrender by the alarms of the timid, or the croakings of wealth against the ascendency of the people.
    • To Samuel Kercheval (1816)

  • I believe... that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another.
  • What all agree upon is probably right; what no two agree in most probably is wrong.
    • Letter to John Adams (January 11, 1817) This statement has been referred to as "Jefferson's Axiom".

  • Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add "within the limits of the law" because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.
    • Letter to Isaac H. Tiffany (1819)

  • We are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.
    • Letter to Willian Roscoe (Dec 27 1820)

  • Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate, than that these people are to be free; nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion have drawn indelible lines of distinction between them.
    • Autobiography (1821) in notes describing some of the debates of 1779 on slavery. These comments reflect biases and assumptions about race that were common in his era.

  • I agree with you that it is the duty of every good citizen to use all the opportunities, which occur to him, for preserving documents relating to the history of our country.
    • Letter to Hugh P. Taylor (October 4, 1823)

  • When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, an hundred.
    • Letter to Thomas Jefferson Smith (February 21, 1825)

  • May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all), the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government.
    • On the decision for Independence made in 1776, in a letter to Roger C. Weightman (June 24, 1826) often quoted as if in reference solely to the document known as the Declaration of Indepence.

  • All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.
  • This is the fourth?
    • Last words (Jefferson died on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence)
    • A few accounts declare that he asked on the night of the third: "Is it the fourth?" Most accounts declare the cited words were his last, and that he died a few hours before John Adams, whose last words are recorded as having been: "Thomas— Jefferson— still surv— " or "Thomas Jefferson still survives."

  • Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and Father of the University of Virginia.
    • Epitaph, upon his instructions to erect a "a plain die or cube ... surmounted by an Obelisk" with "the following inscription, & not a word more…because by these, as testimonials that I have lived, I wish most to be remembered." It omits that he had been President of the United States, a position of political power and prestige, and celebrates his involvement in the creation of the means of inspiration and instruction by which many human lives have been liberated from oppression and ignorance.

Quotes of Jefferson on Religious Matters:

Attributed:

  • Good wine is a necessity of life for me.

  • I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws our country.

  • No free man shall ever be de-barred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain their right to keep and bear arms is as a last resort to protect themselves against tyranny in government.

  • When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.

  • Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.

  • To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.

  • The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

  • Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have ... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases.

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