Quote

The right to use a thing comprehends a right to the means necessary to its use, and without which it would be useless.

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
Means
Without
Right
Mean
Thing
Comprehends
Would
Useless
Necessary
Use

More quotes by Thomas Jefferson

Image
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.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
The only true corrective of Constitutional abuses is education.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
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?
Thomas Jefferson
Image
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.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
The Declaration of Independence . . . [is the] declaratory charter of our rights, and the rights of man.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Government can do something for the people only in proportion as it can do something to the people.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
I am satisfied, and sufficiently occupied with the things which are, without tormenting or troubling myself about those which may indeed be, but of which I have no evidence.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a moneyed aristocracy that has set the Government at defiance. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
The Christian religion is the best religion that has ever been given to man
Thomas Jefferson
Image
The appointment of a woman to office is an innovation for which the public is not prepared, nor I.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous and they are tied to their country and wedded to its liberty and interests by the most lasting bands.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
I have examined all of the known superstitions of the world and i do not find our superstitions of Christianity one redeeming feature. They are all founded on fables and mythology. Christianity has made one-half of the world fools and the other half Hypocrites
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
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.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
[Emigrants] will bring with them the principles of the governments they leave, imbibed in their early youth or, if able to throw off, it will be in exchange for an unbounded licentiousness, passing, as is usual, from one extreme to another. It would be a miracle were they to stop precisely at the point of temperate liberty.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
no people can be both ignorant and free.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
The President is bound to stop at the limits prescribed by our Constitution and law to the authorities in his hands, [and this] would apply in an occasion of peace as well as war.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Men of quality are not threatened by women of equality
Thomas Jefferson
Image
To penetrate and dissipate these clouds of darkness, the general mind must be strengthened by education.
Thomas Jefferson