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Bind them down by the chains of the Constitution where they can do no mischief.

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
Bind
Mischief
Chains
Constitution

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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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One imputation in particular has been repeated till it seems as if some at least believed it: that I am an enemy to commerce. They admit me a friend of agriculture, and suppose me an enemy to the only means of disposing of its produce.
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To constrain the brute force of the people, the European governments deem it necessary to keep them down by hard labor, poverty and ignorance, and to take from them, as from bees, so much of their earnings, as that unremitting labor shall be necessary to obtain a sufficient surplus to sustain a scanty and miserable life.
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There are two amendments only which I am anxious for: 1. A bill of rights, which it is so much the interest of all to have that I conceive it must be yielded...2. The restoring of the principle of necessary rotation, particularly to the Senate and Presidency, but most of all to the last.
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The general desire of men to live by their heads rather than their hands, and the strong allurements of great cities to those who have any turn for dissipation, threaten to make them here, as in Europe, the sinks of voluntary misery.
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The government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers.
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Time indeed changes manners and notions, and so far we must expect institutions to bend to them. But time produces also corruption of principles, and against this it is the duty of good citizens to be ever on the watch, and if the gangrene is to prevail at last, let the day be kept off as long as possible.
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My religious reading has long been confined to the moral branch of religion, which is the same in all religions while in that branch which consists of dogmas, all differ[.
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It can never be too often repeated, that the time for fixing every essential right on a legal basis is while our rulers are honest, and ourselves united.
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Never put off your massage until tomorrow if you can get it today.
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Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous and they are tied to their country and wedded to its liberty and interests by the most lasting bands.
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One never really knows how much one has been touched by a place until one has left it.
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The advocate of religious freedom is to expect neither peace nor forgiveness from [the clergy].
Thomas Jefferson
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Those characters wherein fear predominates over hope may apprehend too much from...instances of irregularity. They may conclude too hastily that nature has formed man insusceptible of any other government than that of force, a conclusion not founded in truth nor experience.
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The fortune of our lives depends on employing well the short period of our youth.
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At the time we were funding our national debt, we heard much about a public debt being a public blessing that the stock representing it was a creation of active capital for the aliment of commerce, manufactures and agriculture. This paradox was well adapted to the minds of believers in dreams.
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What we learn to do, we learn by doing.
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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.
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None but an armed nation can dispense with a standing army
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Whenever you do a thing, act as if all the world were watching.
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