01c. 1784 AD...vast accession of strength from their younger recruits, who having nothing in them of the feelings or principles of ’76 now look to a single and splendid government of an Aristocracy, founded on banking institutions and monied in corporations under the guise and cloak of their favored branches of manufactures commerce and navigation, riding and ruling over the plundered ploughman and beggared yeomanry.Thomas Jefferson / quote ↗
02c. 1784 ADHe who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation.Thomas Jefferson / quote ↗
03c. 1784 ADThe people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ... What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.Thomas Jefferson / quote ↗
04c. 1784 ADSo inscrutable is the arrangement of causes and consequences in this world, that a two-penny duty on tea, unjustly imposed in a sequestered part of it, changes the condition of all its inhabitants.Thomas Jefferson / quote ↗
05c. 1784 ADThe rich alone use imported articles, and on these alone the whole taxes of the General Government are levied...and its surplus applied to canals, roads, schools, etc., the farmer will see his government supported, his children educated, and the face of his country made a paradise by the contributions of the rich alone, without his being called on to spend a cent from his earnings.Thomas Jefferson / quote ↗
06c. 1784 ADA Decalogue of Canons for Observation in Practical Life:1. Never put off to tomorrow what you can do to-day.2. Never trouble another with what you can do yourself.3. Never spend your money before you have it.4. Never buy a thing you do not want, because it is cheap, it will be dear to you.5. Take care of your cents: Dollars will take care of themselves.6. Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst and cold.7. We never repent of having eat too little.8. Nothing is troublesome that one does willingly.9. How much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened.10. Take things always by their smooth handle.11. Think as you please, and so let others, and you will have no disputes.12. When angry, count 10. before you speak; if very angry, 100.Thomas Jefferson / quote ↗
07c. 1784 ADRidicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions.Thomas Jefferson / quote ↗
08c. 1784 ADNothing was or is farther from my intentions, than to enlist myself as the champion of a fixed opinion, where I have only expressed doubt.Thomas Jefferson / quote ↗
09c. 1784 ADAll are dead, and ourselves left alone amidst a new generation whom we know not, and who know us not.Thomas Jefferson / quote ↗
10c. 1784 ADI consider him [Alexander von Humboldt] the most important scientist whom I have met.Thomas Jefferson / quote ↗
11c. 1784 ADThe whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading subjugation on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it: for man is an imitative animal.Thomas Jefferson / quote ↗
12c. 1784 ADI'm a greater believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of itThomas Jefferson / quote ↗
14c. 1784 ADThe fantastical idea of virtue and the public good being a sufficient security to the state against the commission of crimes...was never mine. It is only the sanguinary hue of our penal laws which I meant to object to. Punishments I know are necessary, and I would provide them strict and inflexible, but proportioned to the crime. Death might be inflicted for murder and perhaps for treason, [but I] would take out of the description of treason all crimes which are not such in their nature. Rape, buggery, etc., punish by castration. All other crimes by working on high roads, rivers, gallies, etc., a certain time proportioned to the offence... Laws thus proportionate and mild should never be dispensed with. Let mercy be the character of the lawgiver, but let the judge be a mere machine. The mercies of the law will be dispensed equally and impartially to every description of men; those of the judge or of the executive power will be the eccentric impulses of whimsical, capricious designing man.Thomas Jefferson / quote ↗
15c. 1784 ADCultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous, and they are tied to their country and wedded to its liberty and interests by the most lasting bonds.Thomas Jefferson / quote ↗
16c. 1784 ADIt be urged that the wild and uncultivated tree, hitherto yielding sour and bitter fruit only, can never be made to yield better; yet we know that the grafting art implants a new tree on the savage stock, producing what is most estimable in kind and degree. Education, in like manner, engrafts a new man on the native stock, and improves what in his nature was vicious and perverse into qualities of virtue and social worth.Thomas Jefferson / quote ↗
17c. 1784 AD[n regard to Jesus believing himself inspired]This belief carried no more personal imputation than the belief of Socrates that he was under the care and admonition of a guardian demon. And how many of our wisest men still believe in the reality of these inspirations while perfectly sane on all other subjects (Works, Vol. iv, p. 327).Thomas Jefferson / quote ↗
18c. 1784 ADBut every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle.Thomas Jefferson / quote ↗
19c. 1784 ADNothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle.Thomas Jefferson / quote ↗
20c. 1784 ADWhereas it appeareth that however certain forms of government are better calculated than others to protect individuals in the free exercise of their natural rights, and are at the same time themselves better guarded against degeneracy, yet experience 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, ....whence it becomes expedient for promoting the publick happiness that those persons, whom nature hath endowed with genius and virtue, should be rendered by liberal education worthy to receive, and able to guard the sacred deposit of the rights and liberties of their fellow citizens, and that they should be called to that charge without regard to wealth, birth or accidental condition of circumstance.Thomas Jefferson / quote ↗
21c. 1784 ADIf there is one principle more deeply rooted in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest.Thomas Jefferson / quote ↗
22c. 1784 ADIt is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.Thomas Jefferson / quote ↗
23c. 1784 ADI have often thought that nothing would do more extensive good at small expense than the establishment of a small circulating library in every county, to consist of a few well-chosen books, to be lent to the people of the country under regulations as would secure their safe return in due time.Thomas Jefferson / quote ↗
24c. 1784 ADNothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.Thomas Jefferson / quote ↗
