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The first object of human association [is] the full improvement of their condition.

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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Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing.
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Now I will avow, that I then believed and now believe that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God and that those principles of liberty are as unalterable as human nature and our terrestrial, mundane system.
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Money, not morality, is the principle commerce of civilized nations.
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A right to property is founded in our natural wants, in the means with which we are endowed to satisfy these wants, and the right to what we acquire by those means without violating the similar rights of other sensible beings.
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life is of no value but as it brings gratifications. among the most valuable of these is rational society. it informs the mind, sweetens the temper, chears our spirits, and promotes health.
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The idea is quite unfounded that on entering into society we give up any natural rights.
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The press is impotent when it abandons itself to falsehood.
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They are exactly the persons who are to succeed to the government of our country and to rule its future enmities, its friendships and fortunes.
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Convinced that the people are the only safe depositories of their own liberty, and that they are not safe unless enlightened to a certain degree, I have looked on our present state of liberty as a short-lived possession unless the mass of the people could be informed to a certain degree.
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[T]he true key for the construction of everything doubtful in a law is the intention of the law-makers. This is most safely gathered from the words, but may be sought also in extraneous circumstances provided they do not contradict the express words of the law.
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No man complains of his neighbor for ill management of his affairs, for an error in sowing his land, or marrying his daughter, for consuming his substance in taverns ... in all these he has liberty but if he does not frequent the church, or then conform in ceremonies, there is an immediate uproar.
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The government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers.
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The dead should not rule the living
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The declaration that religious faith shall be unpunished does not give immunity to criminal acts dictated by religious error.
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He, who steadily observes those moral precepts in which all religions concur, will never be questioned at the gates of heaven as to the dogmas in which they all differ.
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An acre of the best ground for hemp, is to be selected and sewn in hemp and be kept for a permanent hemp patch.
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I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master.
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An enlightened citizenry is indispensable for the proper functioning of a republic. Self-government is not possible unless the citizens are educated sufficiently to enable them to exercise oversight. It is therefore imperative that the nation see to it that a suitable education be provided for all its citizens.
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I am savage enough to prefer the woods, the wilds, and the independence of Monticello, to all the brilliant pleasures of this gaycapital [Paris].
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None but an armed nation can dispense with a standing army
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