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No provision in our Constitution ought to be dearer to man than that which protects the rights of conscience against the enterprises of the civil authority.

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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An honest heart being the first blessing, a knowing head is the second.
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Democracy is 51% of the people taking away the rights of the other 49%.
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A determination never to do what is wrong, prudence, and good-humor, will go far toward securing to you the estimation of the world.
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To penetrate and dissipate these clouds of darkness, the general mind must be strengthened by education.
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It is as useless to argue with those who have renounced the use of reason as to administer medication to the dead.
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Earnestly recommended to all officers and soldiers, diligently to attend divine services.
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A noiseless course, not meddling with the affairs of others, unattractive of notice, is a mark that society is going on in happiness. If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them, they must become happy.
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The way to silence religious disputes is to take no notice of them.
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Man is not made for the State but the State for man and it derives its just powers only from the consent of the governed.
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A government is republican in proportion as every member composing it has his equal voice in the direction of its concerns, not indeed in person, which would be impracticable beyond the limits of a city or small township, but by representatives chosen by himself and responsible to him at short periods.
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Friendship is but another name for an alliance with the follies and the misfortunes of others. Our own share of miseries is sufficient: why enter then as volunteers into those of another?
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What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth.... [Instead] reason and persuasion are the only practicable instruments. To make way for these, free enquiry must be indulged and how can we wish others to indulge it while we refuse it ourselves?
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Lethargy is the forerunner of death to the public liberty.
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On every question of construction (of the Constitution) let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit of the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.
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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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Common sense is the foundation of all authorities, of the laws themselves, and of their construction.
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From forty years' experience of the wretched guess-work of the newspapers of what is not done in open daylight, and of their falsehood even as to that, I rarely think them worth reading, and almost never worth notice.
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Where the principle of difference [between political parties] is as substantial and as strongly pronounced as between the republicans and the monocrats of our country, I hold it as honorable to take a firm and decided part and as immoral to pursue a middle line, as between the parties of honest men and rogues, into which every country is divided.
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The information of the people at large can alone make them the safe as they are the sole depositary of our political and religious freedom.
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Aristocrats fear the people, and wish to transfer all power to the higher classes of society.
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