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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

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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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President Jefferson
T. Jefferson
Giving
Nonsense
Consented
Work
Reputation
Wading
Long
Philosopher
Whimsy
World
Philosophy
Unintelligible
Asks
Jargon
Often
Plato
Science
Laid
Give
Republic

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Nothing is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man.
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It is an encouraging observation that no good measure was ever proposed which, if duly pursued, failed to prevail in the end.
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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.
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The man who loves his country on its own account, and not merely for its trappings of interest or power, can never be divorced for it, can never refuse to come forward when he finds that she is engaged in dangers which he has the means of warding off.
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Nothing betrays imbecility so much as the being insensible of it.
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The soil is the gift of God to the living.
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[F]alsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions.
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Whenever you do a thing, act as if all the world were watching.
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Resort is had to ridicule only when reason is against us.
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Experience has already shown that the impeachment the Constitution has provided is not even a scarecrow.
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Let those flatter who fear it is not an American art .
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The clergy believe that any power confided in me will be exerted in opposition to their schemes, and they believe rightly.
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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.
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While the principles of our Constitution give just latitude to inquiry, every citizen faithful to it will deem embodied expressions of discontent and open outrages of law and patriotism as dishonorable as they are injurious
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God has formed us moral agents... that we may promote the happiness of those with whom He has placed us in society, by acting honestly towards all, benevolently to those who fall within our way, respecting sacredly their rights, bodily and mental, and cherishing especially their freedom of conscience, as we value our own.
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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.
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It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.
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Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free. Nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion has drawn indelible lines of distinction between them.
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The physician is happy in the attachment of the families in which he practices. All think he has saved one of them, and he finds himself everywhere a welcome guest, a home in every house.
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If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour?
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