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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
Men
Preserve
Unremitting
Preserves
Boisterous
Prefer
Perils
Likely
Labors
Calm
Timid
Sea
Obtained
Labor
Despotism
Liberty
Peril

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The wise know too well their weakness to assume infallibility and he who knows most knows best how little he knows.
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Nature [has] implanted in our breasts a love of others, a sense of duty to them, a moral instinct, in short, which prompts us irresistibly to feel and to succor their distresses.
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letters are not the first, but the last step in the progression from barbarism to civilisation.
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The ocean ... like the air, is the common birth-right of mankind.
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I join you therefore in branding as cowardly the idea that the human mind is incapable of further advances.
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I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.
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I have wished to see chemistry applied to domestic objects, to malting, for instance, brewing, making cider, to fermentation and distillation generally, to the making of bread, butter, cheese, soap, to the incubation of eggs, &c.
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The introduction of so powerful an agent as steam [to a carriage on wheels] will make a great change in the situation of man.
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Good humor is one of the preservatives of our peace and tranquility.
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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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It is an insult to our citizens to question whether they are rational beings or not, and blasphemy against religion to suppose it cannot stand the test of truth and reason.
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Knowledge indeed is a desirable, a lovely possession.
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I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.
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Lethargy is the forerunner of death to the public liberty.
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the boys of the rising generation are to be the men of the next, and the sole guardians of the principles we deliver over to them.
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The cement of this union is the heart-blood of every American.
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The information of the people at large can alone make them the safe as they are the sole depositary of our political and religious freedom.
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It is Mortifying to suppose it possible that a people able and zealous to contend with the Enemy should be reduced to fold their Arms for want of the means of defence yet no resources that we know of, ensure us against this event.
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It is strangely absurd to suppose that a million of human beings, collected together, are not under the same moral laws which bind each of them separately.
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Always take hold of things by the smooth handle grateful that they are not worse rather than the rough handle, bitter that they are not better.
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