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The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

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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There are two amendments only which I am anxious for: 1. A bill of rights, which it is so much the interest of all to have that I conceive it must be yielded...2. The restoring of the principle of necessary rotation, particularly to the Senate and Presidency, but most of all to the last.
Thomas Jefferson
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For St. Paul only says that it is better to be married than to burn. Now I presume that if that apostle had known that providence would at an after day be so kind to any particular set of people as to furnish them with other means of extinguishing their fire than those of matrimony, he would have earnestly recmmended them to their practice.
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When the heart is right, the feet are swift.
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The price of barbecue is eternal vigilance.
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Honesty is the first chapter in the Book of wisdom. Let it be our endeavor to merit the character of a just nation.
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No man will ever carry out of the Presidency the reputation which carried him into it.
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...We are all Federalists,and we are all Republicans.
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Knowing that religion does not furnish grosser bigots than law, I expect little from old judges.
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When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe.
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The hole and the patch should be commensurate.
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Preachers dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight.
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I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others.
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How soon the labor of men would make a paradise of the earth were it not for misgovernment and a diversion of his energies to selfish interests.
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The merchant has no country .
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Reading, reflection and time have convinced me that the interests of society require the observation of those moral precepts only in which all religions agree.
Thomas Jefferson
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I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others... An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens.... Power is not alluring to pure minds and is not with them the primary principle of contest.
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My opinion is that there would never have been an infidel, if there had never been a priest. The artificial structures they have built on the purest of all moral systems, for the purpose of deriving from it pence and power, revolts those who think for themselves, and who read in that system only what is really there.
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It's only merit was in being the first publication which carried the claim of our rights their whole length, and asserted that there was no rightful link of connection between us and England but that of being under the same king.
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Gaming corrupts our disposition and teaches us a habit of hostility against all mankind.
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The religion-builders have so distorted and deformed the doctrines of Jesus, so muffled them in mysticism, fancies, and falsehoods.
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