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I feel... an ardent desire to see knowledge so disseminated through the mass of mankind that it may, at length, reach even the extremes of society: beggars and kings.

Thomas Jefferson

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Thomas Jefferson
Age: 83 †
Born: 1743
Born: April 2
Died: 1826
Died: July 4
3Rd U.S. President
Archaeologist
Architect
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Diplomat
Farmer
Inventor
Jurist
Lawyer
Philosopher
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Slaveholder
President Jefferson
T. Jefferson
Desire
Length
May
Extremes
Feel
Kings
Feels
Reach
Even
Mass
Disseminated
Mankind
Beggars
Knowledge
Ardent
Society
Beggar

More quotes by Thomas Jefferson

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The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.
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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.
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Men fight for freedom then they begin to accumulate laws to take it away from themselves.
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The opinions of men should not be the object of any government. Our civil rights are no more dependent on our religious beliefs than they are dependent upon our thoughts about geometry or physics!
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God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion... We have had thirteen States independent for eleven years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half, for each State. What country before ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion.
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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.
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I have ever deemed it more honorable and more profitable, too, to set a good example than to follow a bad one.
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No man will labor for himself who can make another labor for him.
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[If a book were] very innocent, and one which might be confided to the reason of any man not likely to be much read if let alone, but if persecuted, it will be generally read. Every man in the United States will think it a duty to buy a copy, in vindication of his right to buy and to read what he pleases.
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I can scarcely contemplate a more incalculable evil than the breaking of the Union into two or more parts.
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Slavery is an abomination and must be loudly proclaimed as such, but I own that I nor any other man has any immediate solution to the problem.
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A lawyer without books would be like a workman without tools.
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If the question [before justices of the peace] relate to any point of public liberty, or if it be one of those in which the judges may be suspected of bias, the jury undertake to decide both law and fact.
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I am savage enough to prefer the woods, the wilds, and the independence of Monticello, to all the brilliant pleasures of this gaycapital [Paris].
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The best defense of democracy is an informed electorate.
Thomas Jefferson
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We generally learn languages for the benefit of reading the books written in them
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Not less than two hours a day should be devoted to exercise, and the weather shall be little regarded. If the body is feeble, the mind will not be strong.
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I consider trial by jury as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution.
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A Nation's best defense is an educated citizenry
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Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of the day but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers (adminstrators) too plainly proves a deliberate, systematic plan of reducing us to slavery.
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