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Against us are all timid men who prefer the calm of despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty We are likely to preserve the liberty we have obtained only by unremitting labors and perils.

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
Calm
Timid
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Labors

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Taste cannot be controlled by law. We must resist at all costs any attempt to regulate our individual freedoms and to legislate our personal moralities.
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When the representative body have lost the confidence of their constituents, when they have notoriously made sale of their most valuable rights, when they have assumed to themselves powers which the people never put into their hands, then indeed their continuing in office becomes dangerous to the state
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What we learn to do, we learn by doing.
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We do not mean to count or weigh our contributions by any standard other than that of our abilities.
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The majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society.
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I think with the Romans, that the general of today should be a soldier tomorrow if necessary.
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I rejoice when I hear of young men of virtue and talents, worthy to receive and likely to preserve the splendid inheritance of self- government, which we have acquired and shaped for them.
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The best commentary on the principles of government which has ever been written.
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Freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of person under protection of habeas corpus and trial by juries impartially selected, these principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us, and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation.
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Paper money is liable to be abused, has been, is, and forever will be abused, in every country in which it is permitted.
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A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.
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From candlelight to early bedtime, I read.
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On every question of construction (of the Constitution) let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit of the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.
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Too old to plant trees for my own gratification, I shall do it for my posterity.
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No society can make a perpetual constitution... The earth belongs always to the living generation.
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No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him.
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Preachers dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight.
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All the world would be Christian if they were taught the pure Gospel of Christ!.
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The Christian religion is the best religion that has ever been given to man
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The private buildings [of Virginia] are very rarely constructed of stone or brick much the greatest proportion being of scantlingand boards, plastered with lime. It is impossible to devise things more ugly, uncomfortable, and happily more perishable.
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