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Free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence it is jealousy, and not confidence, which prescribes limited constitutions, to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power.

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
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For if one link in nature's chain might be lost, another might be lost, until the whole of things will vanish by piecemeal.
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The firmness with which the (American) people have withstood the... abuses of the press, the discernment they have manifested between truth and falsehood, show that they may safely be trusted to hear everything true and false and to form a correct judgment between them.
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Our wish is that...[there be] maintained that state of property, equal or unequal, which results to every man from his own industry or that of his fathers.
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Of publishing a book on religion, my dear sir, I never had an idea. I should as soon think of writing for the reformation of Bedlam, as of the world of religious sects. Of these there must be, at least, ten thousand, every individual of every one of which believes all wrong but his own.
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Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.
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The purpose of establishing different houses of legislation is to introduce the influence of different interests or different principles.
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[T]he dignity of parliament it seems can brook no opposition to it's power. Strange that a set of men who have made sale of theirvirtue to the minister should yet talk of retaining dignity!
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The most successful war seldom pays for its losses.
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We generally learn languages for the benefit of reading the books written in them
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Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct.
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History by apprising them [the people] of the past will enable them to judge of the future. . . . It will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men: it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume and knowing it, to defeat its views.
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Men of quality are not threatened by women of equality
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The persons and property of our citizens are entitled to the protection of our government in all places where they may lawfully go.
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The Creator has not thought proper to mark those in the forehead who are of stuff to make good generals. We are first, therefore, to seek them blindfold, and then let them learn the trade at the expense of great losses.
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Chemistry is yet, indeed, a mere embryon. Its principles are contested experiments seem contradictory their subjects are so minute as to escape our senses and their result too fallacious to satisfy the mind. It is probably an age too soon to propose the establishment of a system.
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The most sacred of the duties of a government [is] to do equal and impartial justice to all its citizens.
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The wise know too well their weakness to assume infallibility and he who knows most knows best how little he knows.
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Every man has two countries: his own and France.
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On a hot day in Virginia, I know nothing more comforting than a fine spiced pickle, brought up trout-like from the sparkling depths of the aromatic jar below the stairs of Aunt Sally's cellar.
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Freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of person under protection of habeas corpus and trial by juries impartially selected, these principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us, and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation.
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