Quotes from Thomas Jefferson

I have given up newspapers in exchange for Tacitus and Thucydides, for Newton and Euclid; and I find myself much the happier.

History has informed us that bodies of men, as well as individuals, are susceptible of the spirit of tyranny.

Let us, then, fellow citizens, unite with one heart and one mind. Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things. And let us reflect that having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little if we countenance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions.

El árbol de la libertad debe ser vigorizado de vez en cuando con la sangre de patriotas y tiranos: es su fertilizante natural»

all. I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the Atmosphere.

A habilidade mais valiosa é aquela de jamais usar duas palavras quando uma apenas basta.

I can't live without books

The clause too, reprobating the enslaving the inhabitants of Africa, was struck out in complaisance to South Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves, and who on the contrary still wished to continue it. Our northern brethren also I believe felt a little tender under those censures; for tho' their people have very few slaves themselves yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others.

Everything yields to diligence.

I cannot live qithout books~ Thomas Jefferson

I can not live without books

I go to my fathers, I welcome the shore Which crowns all my hopes or which buries my cares. Then farewell, my dear, my lov'd daughter, adieu! The last pang of life is in parting from you! Two seraphs awaits me long shrouded in death; I will bear them your love on my last parting breath.

I tremble when I think that God is just.

Under the law of nature, all men are born free, every one comes into the world with a right to his own person, which includes the liberty of moving and using it at his own will. This is what is called personal liberty, and is given him by the author of nature, because necessary for his own sustenance.

A little rebellion now and then is a good thing

wherever the people are well informed they can be trusted with their own government

In proportion to their number, [incompatible immigrants] will infuse into [the nation] their spirit, warp or bias its direction, and render it a heterogeneous, incoherent, distracted mass.

Reason and experiment have been indulged, and error has fled before them. It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself. Subject opinion to coercion: whom will you make your inquisitors? Fallible men; men governed by bad passions, by private as well as public reasons. And why subject it to coercion? To produce uniformity. But is uniformity of opinion desirable? No more than of face and stature.

If you want something you've never had, you've got to do something you've never done

I hope we shall take warning from the example and crush in it's birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and to bid defiance to the laws of their country.

Millions for defense, not one cent for tribute.

If you want something you never had, you have to do something you've never done

If you serve humanity, you serve humanity's God.

Say nothing of my religion. It is known to my God and myself alone. Its evidence before the world is to be sought in my life; if that has been honest and dutiful to society, the religion which has regulated it cannot be a bad one. —Thomas Jefferson.