Thomas Jefferson
life is of no value but as it brings gratifications. among the most valuable of these is rational society. it informs the mind, sweetens the temper, chears our spirits, and promotes health.Collection: Educational
what are the objects of an useful American education? classical knowlege, modern languages & chiefly French, Spanish, & Italian; Mathematics; Natural philosophy; Natural History; Civil History; Ethics.Collection: Philosophy
besides the comfort of knowlege, every science is auxiliary to every other.Collection: Educational
ours are the only farmers who can read HomerCollection: Educational
Travelling. ... when men of sober age travel, they gather knowlege which they may apply usefully for their countryCollection: Country
All authority belongs to the people.Collection: People
The truth is that the want of common education with us is not from our poverty, but from the want of an orderly system. More money is now paid for the education of a part than would be paid for that of the whole if systematically arranged.Collection: Education
People generally have more feeling for canals and roads than education. However, I hope we can advance them with equal pace.Collection: Education
Students of reading, writing and common arithmetick . . . Graecian [Greek], Roman, English and American history . . . should be rendered . . . worthy to receive, and able to guard the sacred deposit of the rights and liberties of their fellow citizens.Collection: Education
Certainly, no power to prescribe any religious exercise, or to assume authority in religious discipline, has been delegated to the General Government.Collection: Religious
I have ever judged of the religion of others by their lives... But this does not satisfy the priesthood. They must have a positive, a declared assent to all of their interested absurdities. My opinion is that there would never have been an infidel, if there had never been a priest.Collection: Religion
No experiment can be more interesting than that we are now trying, and which we trust will end in establishing the fact, that man may be governed by reason and truth.Collection: Men
I never did, or countenanced, in public life, a single act inconsistent with the strictest good faith; having never believed there was one code of morality for a public, and another for a private man.Collection: Integrity
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.Collection: Politics
With the same honest views, the most honest men often form different conclusions.Collection: Men
I trust there is not a young man now living in the United States who will not die a Unitarian.Collection: Men
Every Christian sect gives a great handle to Atheism by their general dogma that, without a revelation, there would not be sufficient proof of the being of god.Collection: Christian
You have never by a word or a deed given me one moment's uneasiness; on the contrary I have felt perpetual gratitude to heaven forhaving given me, in you, a source of so much pure and unmixed happiness.Collection: Family
The great cause which divides our countries is not to be decided by individual animosities. The harmony of private societies cannot weaken national efforts.Collection: Friendship
Good humor is one of the preservatives of our peace and tranquility.Collection: Humor
Certainly one of the highest duties of the citizen is a scrupulous obedience to the laws of the nation. But it is not the highest duty.Collection: Inspirational
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 of what we are to read, and what we must believe?Collection: Religious
He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it the second time.Collection: Liars
Every man has two countries: his own and France.Collection: Country
Man [is] a rational animal, endowed by nature with rights and with an innate sense of justice.Collection: Philosophy
I suppose, indeed, that in public life, a man whose political principles have any decided character and who has energy enough to give them effect must always expect to encounter political hostility from those of adverse principles.Collection: Character
Excessive taxation . . . will carry reason & reflection to every man's door, and particularly in the hour of election.Collection: Reflection
[A]lthough a republican government is slow to move, yet when once in motion, its momentum becomes irresistible.Collection: Moving
Music furnishes a delightful recreation for the hours of respite from the cares of the day, and lasts us through life.Collection: Care
The commotions that have taken place in America, as far as they are yet known to me, offer nothing threatening. They are a proof that the people have liberty enough, and I could not wish them less than they have. If the happiness of the mass of the people can be secured at the expense of a little tempest now and then, or even of a little blood, it will be a precious purchase. 'Malo libertatem periculosam quam quietem servitutem.' Let common sense and common honesty have fair play, and they will soon set things to rights.Collection: Honesty
The art of life is the art of avoiding pain.Collection: Inspirational
In America, no other distinction between man and man had ever been known but that of persons in office exercising powers by authority of the laws, and private individuals. Among these last, the poorest laborer stood on equal ground with the wealthiest millionaire, and generally on a more favored one whenever their rights seem to jar.Collection: Exercise
Cultivators of the earth are the most virtuous and independent citizens.Collection: Independent
An occasional insurrection will not weigh against the inconveniences of a government of force, such as are monarchies and aristocracies.Collection: Wisdom
I know nothing more important to inculcate into the minds of young people than the wisdom, the honor, and the blessed comfort of living within their income.Collection: Blessed
The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.Collection: Religious
The clergy ... believe that any portion of power confided to me [as President] will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly: for I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. But this is all they have to fear from me: and enough, too, in their opinion.Collection: Religious
Religion is a subject on which I have ever been most scrupulously reserved. I have considered it as a matter between every man and his Maker, in which no other, and far less the public, had a right to intermeddle.Collection: Men
Certain teachings in the Bible are as diamonds in a dung-heap.Collection: Religious
Peace with all nations, and the right which that gives us with respect to all nations, are our object.Collection: Peace
No one, I hope, can doubt my wish to see... all mankind exercising self-government, and capable of exercising it. But the question is not what we wish, but what is practicable.Collection: Exercise
The parties of Whig and Tory are those of nature. They exist in all countries, whether called by these names or by those of Aristocrats and Democrats, Cote Droite and Cote Gauche, Ultras and Radicals, Serviles and Liberals. The sickly, weakly, timid man fears the people, and is a Tory by nature. The healthy, strong and bold cherishes them, and is formed a Whig by nature.Collection: Country
The dominion which the banking institutions have obtained over the minds of our citizens...must be broken, or it will break us.Collection: Broken
Our public credit is good, but the abundance of paper has produced a spirit of gambling in the funds, which has laid up our ships at the wharves as too slow instruments of profit, and has even disarmed the hand of the tailor of his needle and thimble. They say the evil will cure itself. I wish it may; but I have rarely seen a gamester cured, even by the disasters of his vocation.Collection: Gambling
Nothing is so disgusting to our sex as want of cleanliness and delicacy in yours.Collection: Sex
If some period be not fixed, either by the Constitution or by practice, to the services of the First Magistrate, his office, though nominally elective, will, in fact, be for life, and that will soon degenerate into an inheritance.Collection: Life
A pirate spreading misery and ruin over the face of the oceanCollection: Ocean
Doubts and jealousies often beget the facts they fear.Collection: Doubt
...the science of calculation also is indispensable as far as the extraction of the square and cube roots: Algebra as far as the quadratic equation and the use of logarithms are often of value in ordinary cases: but all beyond these is but a luxury; a delicious luxury indeed; but not be in indulged in by one who is to have a profession to follow for his subsistence.Collection: Education