Thomas Jefferson
The proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right.Collection: Religious
It is my principle that the will of the majority should always prevail.Collection: Motivational
Gouverneur Morris had often told me that General Washington believed no more of that system (Christianity) than did he himself.Collection: Religion
A government regulating itself by what is wise and just for the many, uninfluenced by the local and selfish views of the few who direct their affairs, has not been seen, perhaps, on earth. Or if it existed for a moment at the birth of ours, it would not be easy to fix the term of its continuance. Still, I believe it does exist here in a greater degree than anywhere else; and for its growth and continuance... I offer sincere prayers.Collection: Wise
I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the atmosphere.Collection: Atmosphere
I never saw an instance of one or two disputants convincing the other by argument.Collection: Two
If ignorance is bliss, why aren't more people happy?Collection: Truth
the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.Collection: Rights
The Greeks by their laws, and the Romans by the spirit of their people, took care to put into the hands of their rulers no such engine of oppression as a standing army. Their system was to make every man a soldier, and oblige him to repair to the standard of his country whenever that was reared. This made them invincible; and the same remedy will make us so.Collection: Death
I long to be in the midst of the children, and have more pleasure in their little follies than in the wisdom of the wise.Collection: Wise
Let those flatter, who fear: it is not an American art. To give praise where it is not due, might be well from the venal, but would ill beseem those who are asserting the rights of human nature.Collection: Art
I would rather have newspapers without a government than a government without newspapers.Collection: Government
Debt and revolution are inseparable as cause and effect.Collection: Debt
In a government bottomed on the will of all, the... liberty of every individual citizen becomes interesting to all.Collection: Freedom
The selfish spirit of commerce, which knows no country, and feels no passion or principle but that of gain.Collection: Country
music, drawing, books, invention & exercise will be so many resources to you against ennui.Collection: Educational
I like to see the people awake and alert.Collection: People
The principles on which we engaged, of which the charter of our independence is the record, were sanctioned by the laws of our being, and we but obeyed them in pursuing undeviatingly the course they called for. It issued finally in that inestimable state of freedom which alone can ensure to man the enjoyment of his equal rights.Collection: Men
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.Collection: People
From the dissensions among Sects themselves arise necessarily a right of choosing and necessity of deliberating to which we will conform. But if we choose for ourselves, we must allow others to choose also, and so reciprocally, this establishes religious liberty.Collection: Religious
Every man wishes to pursue his occupation and to enjoy the fruits of his labours and the produce of his property in peace and safety, and with the least possible expense. When these things are accomplished, all the objects for which government ought to be established are answered.Collection: Men
All the world would be Christian if they were taught the pure Gospel of Christ!.Collection: Christian
The art of governing consists simply of being honest, exercising common sense, following principle, and doing what is right and just.Collection: Art
I can never fear that things will go far wrong where common sense has fair play.Collection: Play
Force cannot give right.Collection: Giving
I do not agree that an age of pleasure is no compensation for a moment of pain.Collection: Pain
Peace is our passion.Collection: Peace
Agreeable society is the first essential in constituting the happiness and of course the value of our existence.Collection: Society
Without society, and a society to our taste, men are never contented.Collection: Men
A single zealot may commence prosecutor, and better men be his victims.Collection: Men
The best commentary on the principles of government which has ever been written.Collection: Government
Blest is that nation whose silent course of happiness furnishes nothing for history to say.Collection: Silent
With respect to our State and federal governments, I do not think their relations correctly understood by foreigners. They generally suppose the former subordinate to the latter. But this is not the case. They are co-ordinate departments of one simple and integral whole.Collection: Thinking
The remaining revenue on the consumption of foreign luxuries to domestic comforts, being collected on our seaboard and frontiers only, and incorporated with the transactions of our mercantile citizens, it may be the pleasure and the pride of an American to ask, What farmer, what merchant, what laborer ever sees a tax gatherer of the United States?Collection: Pride
I have sworn upon the altar of god.Collection: Religious
The information of the people at large can alone make them the safe as they are the sole depositary of our political and religious freedom.Collection: Religious
The diffusion of information and the arraignment of all abuses at the bar of public reason, I deem [one of] the essential principles of our government, and consequently [one of] those which ought to shape its administration.Collection: Government
The value of science to a republican people, the security it gives to liberty by enlightening the minds of its citizens, the protection it affords against foreign power, the virtue it inculcates, the just emulation of the distinction it confers on nations foremost in it; in short, its identification with power, morals, order and happiness (which merits to it premiums of encouragement rather than repressive taxes), are considerations [that should] always [be] present and [bear] with their just weight.Collection: Encouragement
In the constitution of Spain as proposed by the late Cortes, there was a principle entirely new to me:... that no person born after that day should ever acquire the rights of citizenship until he could read and write. It is impossible sufficiently to estimate the wisdom of this provision. Of all those which have been thought of for securing fidelity in the administration of the government, constant reliance to the principles of the constitution, and progressive amendments with the progressive advances of the human mind or changes in human affairs, it is the most effectual.Collection: Writing
Instead of an aristocracy of wealth, of more harm and danger than benefit to society, to make an opening for the aristocracy of virtue and talent, which nature has wisely provided for the direction of the interests of society and scattered with equal hand through all its conditions, was deemed essential to a well-ordered republic.Collection: Hands
I do most anxiously wish to see the highest degrees of education given to the higher degrees of genius and to all degrees of it, so much as may enable them to read and understand what is going on in the world and to keep their part of it going on right; for nothing can keep it right but their own vigilant and distrustful superintendence.Collection: Wish
It is highly interesting to our country, and it is the duty of its functionaries, to provide that every citizen in it should receive an education proportioned to the condition and pursuits of his life.Collection: Country
I feel... an ardent desire to see knowledge so disseminated through the mass of mankind that it may, at length, reach even the extremes of society: beggars and kings.Collection: Kings
The reflections that the boys of this age are to be the men of the next; that they should be prepared to receive the holy charge which we are cherishing to deliver over to them; that in establishing an institution of wisdom for them, we secure it to all our future generations; that in fulfilling this duty, we bring home to our own bosoms the sweet consolation of seeing our sons rising under a luminous tuition, to destinies of high promise; these are considerations which will occur to all.Collection: Sweet
I never before knew the full value of trees....What would I not give that the trees planted nearest round the house at Monticello were full grown.Collection: Giving
Question with boldness even the existence of a god.Collection: Religious
Everything yields to diligence.Collection: Work
The hocus-pocus phantasm of a God, like another Cerberus, with one body and three heads, had its birth and growth in the blood of thousands and thousands of martyrs.Collection: Religious
The failure of one thing is repaired by the success of another.Collection: Success