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Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.

Thomas Jefferson

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Thomas Jefferson
Age: 83 †
Born: 1743
Born: April 2
Died: 1826
Died: July 4
3Rd U.S. President
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President Jefferson
T. Jefferson
Mind
Enlightenment
Enlightening
Like
Generally
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People
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Political
Dawn
Enlighten
Body
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Vanish

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If you have any duty which must be done, and it seems disagreeable, do it promptly and have it over.
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[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.
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[All religious sects] dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subversion of the duperies in which they live.
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His system of morality was the most benevolent and sublime probably that has been ever taught, and consequently more perfect than those of any of the ancient philosophers... He was the most innocent, the most benevolent, the most eloquent and sublime character that ever has been exhibited to man.
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How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened.
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A judiciary independent of a king or executive alone, is a good thing but independence of the will of the nation is a solecism, at least in a republican government.
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Our ancestors ... were laborers, not lawyers.
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The man who would choose security over freedom deserves neither.
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The monopoly of a single bank is certainly an evil. The multiplication of them was intended to cure it but it multiplied an influence of the same character with the first, and completed the supplanting the precious metals by a paper circulation. Between such parties the less we meddle the better.
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The construction applied . . . to those parts of the Constitution of the United States which delegate Congress a power . . . ought not to be construed as themselves to give unlimited powers, nor a part to be so taken as to destroy the whole residue of that instrument.
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The genius of architecture seems to have shed its maledictions over this land.
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I hold the precepts of Jesus as delivered by Himself, to be the most pure, benevolent and sublime which have ever been preached to man.
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Our cause is just. Our union is perfect. ... With hearts fortified ... we most solemnly, before God and the world, declare that... we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverence, employ for the preservation of our liberties being with one mind resolved to die freemen rather than to live slaves.
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I tolerate with the utmost latitude the right of others to differ from me in opinion without imputing to them criminality.
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Take painsto write a neat round, plain hand, and you will find it a great convenience through life to write a small and compact hand as well as a fair and legible one.
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[My] pillar of support through life.... I can say conscientiously that I do not know in the world a man of purer integrity, more dispassionate, disinterested, and devoted to genuine Republicanism nor could I in the whole scope of America and Europe point out an abler head.
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To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.
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We discover in the gospels a groundwork of vulgar ignorance, of things impossible, of superstition, fanaticism and fabrication .
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Though written constitutions may be violated in moments of passion or delusion, yet they furnish a text to which those who are watchful may again rally and recall the people they fix too for the people the principles of their political creed.
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I hope that we have not labored in vain, and that our experiment will still prove that men can be governed by reason.
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