01c. 1784 ADExperience hath shewn, that even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny; and it is believed that the most effectual means of preventing this would be, to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large...Thomas Jefferson / quote ↗
02c. 1784 ADTo talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. Tosay that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is tosay they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels,no soul. I cannot reason otherwise .. . without plunginginto the fathomless abyss of dreams and phantasms. I amsatisfied, and sufficiently occupied with the things whichare, without tormenting or troubling myself aboutthose which may indeed be, but of which I have noevidence.Thomas Jefferson / quote ↗
03c. 1784 ADQuestion with boldness even the existence of aGod; because, if there be one, he must more approve ofthe homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.Thomas Jefferson / quote ↗
04c. 1784 ADIt is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.Thomas Jefferson / quote ↗
05c. 1784 ADIn questions of power, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the constitution.Thomas Jefferson / quote ↗
06c. 1784 ADEqual and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion.Thomas Jefferson / quote ↗
07c. 1784 ADNothing can stop the man with the right mental attitudefrom achieving his goal.Nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong attitude.Thomas Jefferson / quote ↗
08c. 1784 ADThomas Jefferson asked himself “In what country on earth would you rather live ” He first answered “Certainly in my own where are all my friends my relations and the earliest and sweetest affections and recollections of my life.” But he continued “which would be your second choice ” His answer “France.Thomas Jefferson / quote ↗
10c. 1784 ADIn a republican nation, whose citizens are to be led by reason and persuasion and not by force, the art of reasoning becomes of first importanceThomas Jefferson / quote ↗
11c. 1784 ADReason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error.Thomas Jefferson / quote ↗
12c. 1784 AD. . . The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the atmosphere.Thomas Jefferson / quote ↗
13c. 1784 ADI would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty, than those attending too small a degree of it.Thomas Jefferson / quote ↗
14c. 1784 ADThe force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to.Thomas Jefferson / quote ↗
15c. 1784 ADThe Tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrant. It is its natural manure.Thomas Jefferson / quote ↗
16c. 1784 ADNothing is more likely than that [the] enumeration of powers is defective. This is the ordinary case of all human works. Let us then go on perfecting it by adding by way of amendment to the Constitution those powers which time and trial show are still wantingThomas Jefferson / quote ↗
17c. 1784 ADI am conscious that an equal division of property is impracticable. But the consequences of this enormous inequality [in Europe] producing so much misery to the bulk of mankind, legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property,...[One] 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.Thomas Jefferson / quote ↗
18c. 1784 ADWhenever 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. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labour and live on. If, for the encouragement of industry we allow it to be appropriated, we must take care that other employment be furnished to those excluded from the appropriation. If we do not the fundamental right to labour the earth returns to the unemployed.Thomas Jefferson / quote ↗
19c. 1784 ADEvery citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state.Thomas Jefferson / quote ↗
20c. 1784 ADNo man will ever bring out of that office the reputation which carries him into it. The honeymoon would be as short in that case as in any other, and its moments of ecstasy would be ransomed by years of torment and hatred.Thomas Jefferson / quote ↗
21c. 1784 ADSome men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human and suppose what they did to be beyond amendmentThomas Jefferson / quote ↗
22c. 1784 ADIt is an axiom in my mind, that our liberty can never be safe but in the hands of the people themselves, and that too of the people with a certain degree of instruction. This it is the business of the State to effect, and on a general plan.Thomas Jefferson / quote ↗
23c. 1784 ADA democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.Thomas Jefferson / quote ↗
24c. 1784 ADWe have the wolf by the ears; and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.Thomas Jefferson / quote ↗
