Quote

The only true corrective of Constitutional abuses is education.

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
Education
True
Corrective
Abuses
Constitutional
Abuse

More quotes by Thomas Jefferson

Image
I have always said that a studious perusal of the sacred volume will make better citizens, better fathers, and better husbands.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
I never before knew the full value of trees....What would I not give that the trees planted nearest round the house at Monticello were full grown.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Experience having long taught me the reasonableness of mutual sacrifices of opinion among those who are to act together for any common object, and the expediency of doing what good we can when we cannot do all we would wish.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
The present generation has the same right of self-government which the past one has exercised for itself.
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 several states composing the United States of America are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Ignorance of the law is no excuse in any country. If it were, the laws would lose their effect, because it can always be pretended.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
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.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives a loose to the worst of passions, and thus nursed, educated and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
While wading through the whimsies, the puerilities, and unintelligible jargon of this work [Plato's Republic], I laid it down often to ask myself how it could have been that the world should have so long consented to give reputation to such nonsense as this?
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Every man has a commission to admonish, exhort, convince another of error.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
The power of declaring war being with the Legislature, the Executive should do nothing necessarily committing them to decide for war in preference of non-intercourse, which will be preferred by a great many.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
[My] pillar of support through life.... I can say conscientiously that I do not know in the world a man of purer integrity, more dispassionate, disinterested, and devoted to genuine Republicanism nor could I in the whole scope of America and Europe point out an abler head.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Lay down true principles and adhere to them inflexibly. Do not be frightened into their surrender by the alarms of the timid, or the croakings of wealth against the ascendency of the people.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Although our prospect is peace, our policy and purpose are to provide for defense by all those means to which our resources are competent.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
If [God] has made it a law in the nature of man to pursue his own happiness, He has left him free in the choice of place as well as mode, and we may safely call on the whole body of English jurists to produce the map on which nature has traced for each individual the geographical line which she forbids him to cross in pursuit of happiness.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Good humor is one of the preservatives of our peace and tranquility.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
We generally learn languages for the benefit of reading the books written in them
Thomas Jefferson
Image
The construction applied . . . to those parts of the Constitution of the United States which delegate Congress a power . . . ought not to be construed as themselves to give unlimited powers, nor a part to be so taken as to destroy the whole residue of that instrument.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
I am entirely persuaded that the agitations of the public mind advance its powers, and that at every vibration between the points of liberty and despotism, something will be gained for the former. As men become better informed, their rulers must respect them the more.
Thomas Jefferson