Quote

The general desire of men to live by their heads rather than their hands, and the strong allurements of great cities to those who have any turn for dissipation, threaten to make them here, as in Europe, the sinks of voluntary misery.

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
Live
Cities
Dissipation
Great
Turn
Sinks
Make
Turns
Voluntary
Men
Rather
Threaten
Desire
Heads
Strong
Misery
Nature
General
Hands
Europe
Allurements

More quotes by Thomas Jefferson

Image
Old heads as well as young may sometimes be charged with ignorance and presumption. The natural course of the human mind is certainly from credulity to skepticism.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Who then can so softly bind up the wound of another as he who has felt the same wound himself.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
You see I am an enthusiast on the subject of the arts. But it is an enthusiasm of which I am not ashamed, as its object is to improve the taste of my countrymen, to increase their reputation, to reconcile to them the respect of the world, and procure them its praise.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Trial by jury is part of the bright constellation which leads to peace, liberty and safety.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Material abundance without character is the surest way to destruction.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
I have sworn upon the altar of god.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
The patient, treated on the fashionable theory, sometimes gets well in spite of the medicine.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
The abolition of domestic slavery is the great object of desire in those colonies, where it was unhappily introduced in their infant state.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
If we suffer ourselves to be frightened from our post by mere lying, surely the enemy will use that weapon for what one so cheap to those of whose system of politics morality makes no part?
Thomas Jefferson
Image
No government can be maintained without the principle of fear as well as duty. Good men will obey the last, but bad ones the former only. If our government ever fails, it will be from this weakness.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
It is an axiom in my mind that our liberty can never be safe but in the hands of the people themselves, and that too of the people with a certain degree of instruction. This it is the business of the state to effect, and on a general plan.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Still less let it be proposed that our properties within our own territories shall be taxed or regulated by any power on earth but our own.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
I shall need, too, the favor of that Being in whose hands we are, who led our forefathers, as Israel of old.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
A generation may bind itself as long as its majority continues in life when that has disappeared, another majority is in place, holds all the rights and powers their predecessors once held, and may change their laws and institutions to suit themselves. Nothing then is unchangeable but the inherent and inalienable rights of man.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
The mobs of great cities add just so much to the support of pure government as sores do to the strength of the human body.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Force cannot give right.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
But of all the views of this law [universal education] none is more important, none more legitimate, than that of rendering the people the safe, as they are the ultimate, guardians of their own liberty.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
No body wishes more than I do to see such proofs as you exhibit, that nature has given to our black brethren, talents equal to those of the other colors of men, and that the appearance of a want of them is owing merely to the degraded condition of their existence, both in Africa & America.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
A judiciary independent of a king or executive alone, is a good thing but independence of the will of the nation is a solecism, at least in a republican government.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
To preserve the freedom of the human mind then and freedom of the press, every spirit should be ready to devote itself to martyrdom for as long as we may think as we will, and speak as we think, the condition of man will proceed in improvement
Thomas Jefferson