Thomas Jefferson
I am not myself apt to be alarmed at innovations recommended by reason. That dread belongs to those whose interests or prejudices shrink from the advance of truth and science.Collection: Innovation
The opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction.Collection: Truth
I see the necessity of sacrificing our opinions sometimes to the opinions of others for the sake of harmony.Collection: Sacrifice
A government held together by the bands of reason only, requires much compromise of opinion.Collection: Government
Every man has a commission to admonish, exhort, convince another of error.Collection: Men
The Gothic idea that we were to look backwards instead of forwards for the improvement of the human mind, and to recur to the annals of our ancestors for what is most perfect in government, in religion and in learning, is worthy of those bigots in religion and government by whom it has been recommended, and whose purposes it would answer. But it is not an idea which this country will endure.Collection: Country
If we suffer ourselves to be frightened from our post by mere lying, surely the enemy will use that weapon; for what one so cheap to those of whose system of politics morality makes no part?Collection: Lying
Truth between candid minds can never do harm.Collection: Truth
I have learned to be less confident in the conclusions of human reason, and give more credit to the honesty of contrary opinions.Collection: Honesty
It is surely time for men to think for themselves, and to throw off the authority of names so artificially magnified.Collection: Men
The division into whig and tory is founded in the nature of men; the weakly and nerveless, the rich and the corrupt, seeing more safety and accessibility in a strong executive; the healthy, firm, and virtuous, feeling confidence in their physical and moral resources, and willing to part with only so much power as is necessary for their good government; and, therefore, to retain the rest in the hands of the many, the division will substantially be into Whig and Tory.Collection: Strong
Men of energy of character must have enemies; because there are two sides to every question, and taking one with decision, and acting on it with effect, those who take the other will of course be hostile in proportion as they feel that effect.Collection: Character
I love peace, and am anxious that we should give the world still another useful lesson, by showing to them other modes of punishing injuries than by war, which is as much a punishment to the punisher as to the sufferer.Collection: Peace
War has been avoided from a due sense of the miseries, and the demoralization it produces, and of the superior blessings of a state of peace and friendship with all mankind.Collection: Peace
I value peace, and I should unwillingly see any event take place which would render war a necessary resource.Collection: Peace
I do not believe war the most certain means of enforcing principles. Those peaceable coercions which are in the power of every nation, if undertaken in concert and in time of peace, are more likely to produce the desired effect.Collection: Peace
A first attempt to recover the right of self government may fail, so may a second, a third, etc. But as a younger and more instructed race comes on, the sentiment becomes more and more intuitive, and a fourth, a fifth, or some subsequent one of the ever renewed attempts will ultimately succeed... To attain all this, however, rivers of blood must yet flow, and years of desolation pass over; yet the object is worth rivers of blood and years of desolation. For what inheritance so valuable can man leave to his posterity?Collection: Men
War is not the best engine for us to resort to; nature has given us one in our commerce, which if properly managed, will be a better instrument for obliging the interested nations of Europe to treat us with justice.Collection: War
The natural aristocracy I consider as the most precious gift of nature for the instruction, the trusts, and government of society. And indeed it would have been inconsistent in creation to have formed man for the social state, and not to have provided virtue and wisdom enough to manage the concerns of the society. May we not even say that that form of government is the best which provides the most - for a pure selection of these natural aristoi into the offices of government?Collection: Men
It has also been a great solace to me, to believe that you are engaged in vindicating to posterity the course we have pursued for preserving to them, in all their purity, the blessings of self-government, which we had assisted too in acquiring for them. If ever the earth has beheld a system of administration conducted with a single and steadfast eye to the general interest and happiness of those committed to it, one which, protected by truth, can never know reproach, it is that to which our lives have been devoted.Collection: Believe
Taxes should be proportioned to what may be annually spared by the individual.Collection: Taxation
It must be observed that our revenues are raised almost wholly on imported goods.Collection: Taxation
Still less, let it be proposed that our properties within our own territories shall be taxed or regulated by any power on earth but our own. The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time: the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them.Collection: Hands
We are firmly convinced, and we act on that conviction, that with nations as with individuals our interests soundly calculated will ever be found inseparable from our moral duties, and history bears witness to the fact that a just nation is trusted on its word when recourse is had to armaments and wars to bridle others.Collection: War
Still we did not expect to be without rubs and difficulties; and we have had them. First the detention of Western posts: then the coalition of Pilnitz, outlawing our commerce with France, and the British enforcement of the outlawry. In your day French depredations; in mine English, and the Berlin and Milan decrees: now the English orders of council, and the piracies they authorize. When these shall be over, it will the impressment of our seamen, or something else; and so we have gone on, and so we shall go on, puzzled and prospering beyond example in the history of man.Collection: Men
[I]t seems that the Cannibals of Europe are going to eat one another again. A war between Russia and Turkey is like the battle of the kite and snake; whichever destroys the other, leaves a destroyer the less for the world.Collection: War
I hope we shall prove how much happier for man the Quaker policy is, and that the life of the feeder is better than that of the fighter; and it is some consolation that the desolation by these maniacs of one part of the earth is the means of improving it in other parts. Let the latter be our office, and let us milk the cow, while the Russian holds her by the horns, and the Turk by the tail.Collection: Mean
We wish the happiness and prosperity of every nation.Collection: Wish
[A] spirit of justice and friendly accomodation...is our duty and our interest to cultivate with all nations.Collection: Justice
Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.Collection: War
Natural rights [are] the objects for the protection of which society is formed and municipal laws established.Collection: Rights
Although our prospect is peace, our policy and purpose are to provide for defense by all those means to which our resources are competent.Collection: Mean
The power of making war often prevents it, and in our case would give efficacy to our desire of peace.Collection: War
With earnest prayers to all my friends to cherish mutual good will, to promote harmony and conciliation, and above all things to let the love of our country soar above all minor passions, I tender you the assurance of my affectionate esteem and respect.Collection: Love
[The Federal Convention] is really an assembly of demigods.Collection: Assembly
[T]he true key for the construction of everything doubtful in a law is the intention of the law-makers. This is most safely gathered from the words, but may be sought also in extraneous circumstances provided they do not contradict the express words of the law.Collection: Keys
We lay it down as a fundamental, that laws, to be just, must give a reciprocation of right; that, without this, they are mere arbitrary rules of conduct, founded in force, and not in conscience.Collection: Law
Newspapers . . . serve as chimnies to carry off noxious vapors and smoke.Collection: Vapor
A truth now and then projecting into the ocean of newspaper lies serves like headlands to correct our course. Indeed, my scepticism as to everything I see in a newspaper makes me indifferent whether I ever see one.Collection: Lying
Experience having long taught me the reasonableness of mutual sacrifices of opinion among those who are to act together for any common object, and the expediency of doing what good we can; when we cannot do all we would wish.Collection: Sacrifice
I considered 4 of these bills [of the revised code of Virginia] as forming a system by which every fibre would be eradicated of antient or future aristocracy; and a foundation laid for a government truly republican.Collection: Government
Aristocrats fear the people, and wish to transfer all power to the higher classes of society.Collection: Class
The possession of facts is knowledge; the use of them is wisdom.Collection: Wisdom
[We should be] determined... to sever ourselves from the union we so much value rather than give up the rights of self-government... in which alone we see liberty, safety and happiness.Collection: Giving Up
I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world and do not find in our particular superstition [Christianity] one redeeming feature.Collection: Death
Still less let it be proposed that our properties within our own territories shall be taxed or regulated by any power on earth but our own.Collection: Taxation
For if one link in nature's chain might be lost, another might be lost, until the whole of things will vanish by piecemeal.Collection: Nature
Traveling makes men wiser, but less happy.Collection: Travel
Bigotry is the disease of ignorance.Collection: Ignorance