Thomas Jefferson
One single object . . . [will merit] the endless gratitude of the society: that of restraining the judges from usurping legislation.Collection: Gratitude
Was the government to prescribe to us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are now.Collection: Rights
Our civil rights have no dependence upon our religious opinions more than our opinions in physics or geometry.Collection: Religious
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 the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus.Collection: Jesus
Our country is too large to have all its affairs directed by a single government. Public servants at such a distance, and from under the eye of their constituents, must, from the circumstance of distance, be unable to administer and overlook all the details necessary for the good government of the citizens; and the same circumstance, by rendering detection impossible to their constituents, will invite public agents to corruption, plunder and waste.Collection: Country
If, in my retirement to the humble station of a private citizen, I am accompanied with the esteem and approbation of my fellow citizens, trophies obtained by the bloodstained steel, or the tattered flags of the tented field, will never be envied. The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government.Collection: Retirement
[The purpose of a written constitution is] to bind up the several branches of government by certain laws, which, when they transgress, their acts shall become nullities; to render unnecessary an appeal to the people, or in other words a rebellion, on every infraction of their rights, on the peril that their acquiescence shall be construed into an intention to surrender those rights.Collection: Rights
The constitutions of most of our States assert, that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves, in all cases to which they think themselves competent, or they may act by representatives, freely and equally chosen; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed; that they are entitled to freedom of person, freedom of religion, freedom of property, and freedom of the press.Collection: Exercise
I have often thought that if heaven had given me choice of my position and calling, it should have been on a rich spot of earth, well watered, and near a good market for the productions of the garden. No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of the garden. Such a variety of subjects, some one always coming to perfection, the failure of one thing repaired by the success of another, and instead of one harvest a continued one through the year.Collection: Garden
The day is not distant when we must bear and adopt [the abolition of slavery], or worse will follow.Collection: Abolition Of Slavery
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.Collection: Philosophy
My reason for fixing them in office for a term of years, rather than for life, was that they might have an idea that they were at a certain period to return into the mass of the people and become the governed instead of the governors which might still keep alive that regard to the public good that otherwise they might perhaps be induced by their independence to forget.Collection: Years
My opinion is that there would never have been an infidel, if there had never been a priest. The artificial structures they have built on the purest of all moral systems, for the purpose of deriving from it pence and power, revolts those who think for themselves, and who read in that system only what is really there.Collection: Thinking
The impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world and through all time.Collection: Men
If there is a gratification which I envy any people in this world it is to your country [Italy] its music. This is the favorite passion of my soul, and fortune has cast my lot in a country where it is in a state of deplorable barbarism.Collection: Music
No provision in our Constitution ought to be dearer to man than that which protects the rights of conscience against the enterprises of the civil authority.Collection: Men
Lethargy is the forerunner of death to the public liberty.Collection: Patriotism
If we believe that he [Jesus Christ]really countenanced the follies, the falsehoods, and the charlatanisms, which his biographers [writers of the New Testament]father upon him, and admit the misconstructions, interpolations, and theorizations of the fathers of the early and the fanatics of the latter ages, the conclusion would be irresistible by every sound mind that he was an impostor.Collection: Jesus
The declaration that religious faith shall be unpunished does not give immunity to criminal acts dictated by religious error.Collection: Religious
We must be contented to amuse, when we cannot inform.Collection: Amusement
Let common sense and common honesty have fair play, and they will soon set things to rights.Collection: Honesty
No man will labor for himself who can make another labor for him.Collection: Work
The days of life are consumed, one by one, without an object beyond the present moment; ever flying from the ennui of that, yet carrying it with us; eternally in pursuit of happiness, which keeps eternally before us. If death or bankruptcy happen to trip us out of the circle, it is matter for the buzz of the evening, and is completely forgotten by the next morning.Collection: Life
A man's moral sense must be unusually strong if slavery does not make him a thief.Collection: Strong
Freedom [is] the first-born daughter of scienceCollection: Daughter
My great wish is to go on in a strict but silent performance of my duty; to avoid attracting notice, and to keep my name out of the newspapers.Collection: Names
One precedent in favor of power is stronger than a hundred against it.Collection: Power
Though [the people] may acquiesce, they cannot approve what they do not understand.Collection: People
If the Wise be the happy man... he must be virtuous too; for, without virtue, happiness cannot be. This then is the true scope of all academical emulation.Collection: Wise
The darker the berry, the sweeter the juice.Collection: Berries
We sometimes from dreams pick up some hint worth improving by reflection.Collection: Dream
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.Collection: Reading
In reviewing the history of the times through which we have passed, no portion of it gives greater satisfaction or reflection, than that which represents the efforts of the friends of religious freedom and the success with which they are crowned.Collection: Religious
But every state, says an inquisitor, has established some religion. No two, say I, have established the same. Is this a proof of the infallibility of establishments?Collection: Two
The more a subject is understood, the more briefly it may be explained.Collection: May
Laws provide against injury from others; but not from ourselves.Collection: Freedom
the study of the law is useful in a variety of points of view. it qualifies a man to be useful to himself, to his neighbors, & to the public.Collection: Educational
The advocate of religious freedom is to expect neither peace nor forgiveness from [the clergy].Collection: Religious
Ministers of the Gospel are excluded [from serving as Visitors of the county Elementary Schools] to avoid jealousy from the other sects, were the public education committed to the ministers of a particular one; and with more reason than in the case of their exclusion from the legislative and executive functions.Collection: Religious
No religious reading, instruction or exercise, shall be prescribed or practiced [in the elementary schools] inconsistent with the tenets of any religious sect or denomination.Collection: Religious
In our early struggles for liberty, religious freedom could not fail to become a primary object.Collection: Religious
I was dupedby the Secretary of the treasury [Alexander Hamilton], and made a fool for forwarding his schemes, not then sufficiently understood by me; and of all the errors of my political life, this has occasioned the deepest regret.Collection: Regret
A rising nation, spread over a wide and fruitful Land, traversing all the seas with the rich production of their Industry.Collection: Sea
Nothing is so engaging as the little domestic cares into which you appear to be entering, and as to reading it is useful for onlyfilling up the chinks of more useful and healthy occupations.Collection: Reading
A good neighbor is a very desireable thing.Collection: Neighbor
When tempted to do any thing in secret, ask yourself if you would do it in public.Collection: Temptation
If you have to eat crow, eat it while it's young and tender.Collection: Motivational
Our judges are as honest as other men and not more so. They have, with others, the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps.Collection: Party
The greatest honor of a man is in doing good to his fellow men, not in destroying them.Collection: Men