Quote

I do not believe war the most certain means of enforcing principles. Those peaceable coercions which are in the power of every nation, if undertaken in concert and in time of peace, are more likely to produce the desired effect.

Thomas Jefferson

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Thomas Jefferson
Age: 83 †
Born: 1743
Born: April 2
Died: 1826
Died: July 4
3Rd U.S. President
Archaeologist
Architect
Cryptographer
Diplomat
Farmer
Inventor
Jurist
Lawyer
Philosopher
Politician
Slaveholder
President Jefferson
T. Jefferson
Power
Produce
Undertaken
Mean
Nation
Coercion
Every
Principles
Desired
Believe
Nations
Concert
Time
Peace
Concerts
War
Likely
Means
Effect
Peaceable
Certain
Effects
Enforcing

More quotes by Thomas Jefferson

Image
I shall often go wrong through defect of judgment. When right, I shall often be thought wrong by those whose positions will not command a view of the whole ground. I ask your indulgence for my own errors, which will never be intentional, and your support against the errors of others, who may condemn what they would not if seen in all its parts.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
In reviewing the history of the times through which we have passed, no portion of it gives greater satisfaction or reflection, than that which represents the efforts of the friends of religious freedom and the success with which they are crowned.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
That these are our grievances which we have thus laid before his majesty, with that freedom of language and sentiment which becomes a free people claiming their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Long accustomed to the use of European manufactures, [the Cherokee Indians] are as incapable of returning to their habits of skinsand furs as we are, and find their wants the less tolerable as they are occasioned by a war [the American Revolution] the event of which is scarcely interesting to them.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
The law for religious freedom... [has]put down the aristocracy of the clergy and restored to the citizen the freedom of the mind.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
The Christian religion is the best religion that has ever been given to man
Thomas Jefferson
Image
The Giver of life gave it for happiness and not for wretchedness.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Nothing was or is farther from my intentions, than to enlist myself as the champion of a fixed opinion, where I have only expressed doubt.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
No society can make a perpetual constitution... The earth belongs always to the living generation.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Peace with all nations, and the right which that gives us with respect to all nations, are our object.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Evil triumphs when good men do nothing.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Against us are all timid men who prefer the calm of despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty We are likely to preserve the liberty we have obtained only by unremitting labors and perils.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
I shall rejoin myself to my native country, with new attachments, and with exaggerated esteem for its advantages for though there is less wealth there, there is more freedom, more ease, and less misery.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Health is value greater than studying.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Health is the requisite after morality
Thomas Jefferson
Image
The good opinion of mankind, like the lever of Archimedes, with the given fulcrum, moves the world.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
The superiority of chocolate (hot chocolate), both for health and nourishment, will soon give it the same preference over tea and coffee in America which it has in Spain.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
We may consider each generation as a distinct nation, with a right, by the will of its majority, to bind themselves, but none to bind the succeeding generation, more than the inhabitants of another country.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
It is an encouraging observation that no good measure was ever proposed which, if duly pursued, failed to prevail in the end.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Preachers dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight.
Thomas Jefferson