Thomas Jefferson
The last hope of human liberty in this world rests on us. we ought, for so dear a stake, to sacrifice every attachment & every enmity.Collection: Sacrifice
It's only merit was in being the first publication which carried the claim of our rights their whole length, and asserted that there was no rightful link of connection between us and England but that of being under the same king.Collection: Kings
The cement of this union is in the heart blood of every American. I do not believe there is on earth a government established on so immovable a basis.Collection: Believe
Never suppose that in any possible situation or under any circumstances that it is best for you to do a dishonorable thing however slightly so it may appear to you... Encourage all your virtuous dispositions, and exercise them whenever an opportunity arises, being assured that they will gain strength by exercise ... and that exercise will make them habitual.Collection: Truth
Though you cannot see, when you take one step, what will be the next, yet follow truth, justice, and plain dealing, and never fear their leading you out of [any difficult situation] in the easiest manner possible.Collection: Truth
Man was destined for society. His morality therefore was to be formed to this object. He was endowed with a sense of right and wrong merely relative to this. This sense is as much a part of his nature as the sense of hearing, seeing, feeling; it is the true foundation of morality... The moral sense, or conscience, is as much a part of man as his leg or arm. It is given to all human beings in a stronger or weaker degree, as force of members is given them in a greater or less degree. It may be strengthened by exercise, as may any particular limb of the body.Collection: Exercise
Neither believe nor reject any thing because any other person, or description of persons have rejected or believed it. Your own reason is the only oracle given you by heaven.Collection: Spiritual
If the obstacles of bigotry and priestcraft can be surmounted, we may hope that common sense will suffice to do everything else.Collection: War
What justice would there be to take this life? Justice, gentlemen? Why, I would just as soon put a hog in the electric chair as this.Collection: Justice
It look like the lord just work for wite folks cause ever sens i wasn nothin but a litle boy i been on my on haulin water to the fiel on that ol water cart wit all them dime bukets an that dipper just hittin an old dorthy just trottin and trottin an me up their hittin her wit that rope.Collection: Boys
I don't want them to kill no hog . . . . I want a man to go to that chair, on his own two feet.Collection: Men
Planting is one of my great amusements, and even of those things which can only be for posterity, for a Septuagenary has no right to count on any thing but annuals.Collection: Death
It may be regarded as certain that not a foot of land will ever be taken from the Indians without their own consent.Collection: Taken
Now I will avow, that I then believed and now believe that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God; and that those principles of liberty are as unalterable as human nature and our terrestrial, mundane system.Collection: Believe
The first object of human association [is] the full improvement of their condition.Collection: Politics
The only orthodox object of the institution of government is to secure the greatest degree of happiness possible to the general mass of those associated under it.Collection: Government
The superiority of chocolate (hot chocolate), both for health and nourishment, will soon give it the same preference over tea and coffee in America which it has in Spain.Collection: Coffee
Nature [has] implanted in our breasts a love of others, a sense of duty to them, a moral instinct, in short, which prompts us irresistibly to feel and to succor their distresses.Collection: Moral
Why suspend the habeas corpus in insurrections and rebellions? Examine the history of England. See how few of the cases of the suspension of the habeas corpus law have been worthy of that suspension. They have been either real treasons, wherein the parties might as well have been charged at once, or sham plots, where it was shameful they should ever have been suspected. Yet for the few cases wherein the suspension of the habeas corpus has done real good, that operation is now become habitual and the minds of the nation almost prepared to live under its constant suspension.Collection: Real
On a hot day in Virginia, I know nothing more comforting than a fine spiced pickle, brought up trout-like from the sparkling depths of the aromatic jar below the stairs of Aunt Sally's cellar.Collection: Food
And Botany I rank with the most valuable sciences, whether we consider its subjects as furnishing the principal subsistence of life to man and beast, delicious varieties for our tables, refreshments from our orchards, the adornments of our flower-borders, shade and perfume of our groves, materials for our buildings, or medicaments for our bodies.Collection: Flower
Let us in education dream of an aristocracy of achievement arising out of a democracy of opportunityCollection: Dream
The metaphysical insanities of Athanasius, of Loyola, and of Calvin, are, to my understanding, mere lapses into polytheism, differing from paganism only by being more unintelligible.Collection: Insanity
I hold it that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms are in the physical. Unsuccessful rebellions, indeed, generally establish the encroachments on the rights of the people, which have produced them. An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions, as not to discourage them too much. It is medicine necessary for the sound health of government.Collection: Rights
Under the law of nature, all men are born free, every one comes into the world with a right to his own person, which includes the liberty of moving and using it at his own will. This is what is called personal liberty, and is given him by the AuthorCollection: Moving
[Oppose] with manly firmness [any] invasions on the rights of the people.Collection: Freedom
But every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have been called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists.Collection: Names
We have no right to prejudice another in his civil enjoyments because he is of another church.Collection: Church
We are now trusting to those who are against us in position and principle, to fashion to their own form the minds and affections of our youth... This canker is eating on the vitals of our existence, and if not arrested at once, will be beyond remedy.Collection: Fashion
We ought not to schismatize on either men or measures. Principles alone can justify that.Collection: Men
We often repent of what we have said, but never, never, of that which we have not.Collection: Political
We confide in our strength, without boasting of it, we respect that of others, without fearing it.Collection: Strength
It is left... to the juries, if they think the permanent judges are under any bias whatever in any cause, to take on themselves to judge the law as well as the fact. They never exercise this power but when they suspect partiality in the judges; and by the exercise of this power they have been the firmest bulwarks of English liberty.Collection: Exercise
It can never be too often repeated, that the time for fixing every essential right on a legal basis is while our rulers are honest, and ourselves united.Collection: Essentials
Nothing is troublesome that we do willingly.Collection: Work
If the body be feeble, the mind will not be strong.Collection: Strong
Convinced that the people are the only safe depositories of their own liberty, and that they are not safe unless enlightened to a certain degree, I have looked on our present state of liberty as a short-lived possession unless the mass of the people could be informed to a certain degree.Collection: Education
[T]he opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves, in their, own sphere of action, but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch.Collection: Government
Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind.Collection: Character
You see I am an enthusiast on the subject of the arts. But it is an enthusiasm of which I am not ashamed, as its object is to improve the taste of my countrymen, to increase their reputation, to reconcile to them the respect of the world, and procure them its praise.Collection: Art
To me... it appears that there have been differences of opinion and party differences, from the first establishment of government to the present day, and on the same question which now divides our own country; that these will continue through all future time; that every one takes his side in favor of the many, or of the few, according to his constitution, and the circumstances in which he is placed.Collection: Country
If I had to choose between government without newspapers, and newspapers without government, I wouldn't hesitate to choose the latterCollection: Government
The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.Collection: Religious
I may err in my measures, but never shall deflect from the intention to fortify the public liberty by every possible means, and to put it out of the power of the few to riot on the labors of the many.Collection: Mean
I was much an enemy to monarchies before I came to Europe. I am ten thousand times more so, since I have seen what they are. There is scarcely an evil known in these countries, which may not be traced to their king, as its source, nor a good, which is not derived from the small fibres of republicanism existing among them.Collection: Country
To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of materialism by Locke, Tracy, and Stewart. At what age of the Christian church this heresy of immaterialism, this masked atheism, crept in, I do not know. But heresy it certainly is.Collection: Christian
Legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property... Another 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. Whenever there is in any country, uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right.Collection: Country
The plough is to the farmer what the wand is to the sorcerer. Its effect is really like sorcery.Collection: Science
Female education ... has occupied my attention so far only as the education of my own daughters ... I thought it essential to give them a solid education which might enable them, when become mothers, to educate their own daughters, and even to direct the course for sons, should their fathers be.Collection: Daughter