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Circumstances sometimes require, that rights the most unquestionable should be advanced with delicacy.

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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The Governor would serve a five-year term and be ineligible for reelection.
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this interesting subject, which, if the condition of man is to be progressively ameliorated, as we fondly hope and believe, is to be the chief instrument in effecting it.
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The constitutional freedom of religion is the most inalienable and sacred of all human rights
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No religious reading, instruction or exercise, shall be prescribed or practiced [in the elementary schools] inconsistent with the tenets of any religious sect or denomination.
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Yet the hour of emancipation is advancing ... this enterprise is for the young for those who can follow it up, and bear it through to it's consummation. It shall have all my prayers, and these are the only weapons of an old man.
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Bigotry is the disease of ignorance, of morbid minds enthusiasm of the free and buoyant. Education and free discussion are the antidotes of both.
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I am sure the man who powders most, perfumes most, embroiders most, and talks most nonsense, is most admired. Though to be candid, there are some who have too much good sense to esteem such monkey-like animals as these, in whose formation, as the saying is, the tailors and barbers go halves with God Almighty.
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the qualifications for self-government in society are not innate. they are the result of habit and long training.
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Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.
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Paul was the first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus.
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I shall need, too, the favor of that Being in whose hands we are, who led our forefathers, as Israel of old.
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The time to guard against corruption and tyranny is before they shall have gotten hold of us. It is better to keep the wolf out of the fold, than to trust to drawing his teeth and talons after he shall have entered.
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The only orthodox object of the institution of government is to secure the greatest degree of happiness possible to the general mass of those associated under it.
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To take a single step beyond the text would be to take possession of a boundless field of power.
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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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The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it.
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It is not the policy of the government in America to give aid to works of any kind. They let things take their natural course without help or impediment, which is generally the best policy.
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Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched?
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The late rebellion in Massachusetts has given more alarm than I think it should have done. Calculate that one rebellion in thirteen states in the course of eleven years, is but one for each state in a century and a half. No country should be so long without one. Nor will any degree of power in the hands of government prevent insurrections.
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Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the ark of the Covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment.
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