Quote

I can scarcely contemplate a more incalculable evil than the breaking of the Union into two or more parts.

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
Unions
Parts
Evil
Incalculable
War
Contemplate
Two
Scarcely
Contemplating
Breaking
Union

More quotes by Thomas Jefferson

Image
Never use two words when one will do.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
In a virtuous and free state, no rewards can be so pleasing to sensible minds, as those which include the approbation of our fellow citizens. My great pain is, lest my poor endeavours should fall short of the kind expectations of my country.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
To the corruptions of Christianity I am indeed opposed but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian, in the only sense he wished any one to be sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others ascribing to himself every human excellence & believing he never claimed any other.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
If your letters are as long as the bible, they will appear short to me. Only let them be brim full of affection.
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
The chief purpose of government is to protect life. Abandon that and you have abandoned all.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
The soil is the gift of God to the living.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Action will delineate and define you.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
He alone who walks strict and upright, and who, in matters of opinion, will be contented that others should be as free as himself and acquiesce when his opinion is freely overruled, will attain his object in the end.
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
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
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
So inscrutable is the arrangement of causes and consequences in this world, that a two-penny duty on tea, unjustly imposed in a sequestered part of it, changes the condition of all its inhabitants.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
I never saw an instance of one or two disputants convincing the other by argument.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
The sovereign invigorator of the body is exercise, and of all the exercises walking is the best.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
I advance with obedience to the work, ready to retire from it whenever you become sensible how much better choice it is in your power to make.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Honesty and interest are as intimately connected in the public as in the private code of morality.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
I was much an enemy to monarchies before I came to Europe. I am ten thousand times more so, since I have seen what they are. There is scarcely an evil known in these countries, which may not be traced to their king, as its source, nor a good, which is not derived from the small fibres of republicanism existing among them.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
The opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
A professorship of Theology should have no place in our institution [the University of Virginia]
Thomas Jefferson