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Truth is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless, by human interposition, disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.

Thomas Jefferson

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Thomas Jefferson
Age: 83 †
Born: 1743
Born: April 2
Died: 1826
Died: July 4
3Rd U.S. President
Archaeologist
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President Jefferson
T. Jefferson
Fear
Argument
Contradict
Truth
Conflict
Permitted
Human
Weapons
Freely
Humans
Unless
Error
Nothing
Dangerous
Proper
Interposition
Politics
Sufficient
Disarmed
Free
Debate
Ceasing
Natural
Errors
Antagonist

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War is not the best engine for us to resort to nature has given us one in our commerce, which if properly managed, will be a better instrument for obliging the interested nations of Europe to treat us with justice.
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Were we directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we should soon want bread.
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Truth between candid minds can never do harm.
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An injured friend is the bitterest of foes.
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I am increasingly persuaded that the earth belongs exclusively to the living and that one generation has no more right to bind another to it's laws and judgments than one independent nation has the right to command another.
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Certain teachings in the Bible are as diamonds in a dung-heap.
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It is to secure our rights that we resort to government at all.
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No generation has a right to contract debts greater than can be paid off during the course of its own existence.
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Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto.
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I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.
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To the corruptions of Christianity I am indeed opposed but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself.
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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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Victory and defeat are each of the same price.
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I have not observed mens honesty to increase with their riches.
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Every man, and every body of men on earth, possesses the right of self-government. They receive it with their being from the hand of nature. Individuals exercise it by their single will collections of men by that of their majority for the law of the majority is the natural law of every society of men.
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By... [selecting] the youths of genius from among the classes of the poor, we hope to avail the State of those talents which nature has sown as liberally among the poor as the rich, but which perish without use if not sought for and cultivated.
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My affections were first for my own country, then, generally, for all mankind
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To constrain the brute force of the people, the European governments deem it necessary to keep them down by hard labor, poverty and ignorance, and to take from them, as from bees, so much of their earnings, as that unremitting labor shall be necessary to obtain a sufficient surplus to sustain a scanty and miserable life.
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No man has done everything he can who has done only his best.
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Force cannot give right.
Thomas Jefferson