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Error is to be pitied and pardoned: it is the weakness of human nature. But vice is a foul blemish, not pardonable in any character.

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
Humans
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It is proof of sincerity, which I value above all things as, between those who practice it, falsehood and malice work their efforts in vain.
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I prefer the tumult of liberty to the quiet of servitude
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Taste cannot be controlled by law.
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I know nothing more important to inculcate into the minds of young people than the wisdom, the honor, and the blessed comfort of living within their income.
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Shake hands with Pain, give greeting unto Grief, Those angels in disguise, and thy glad soul From height to height, from star to shining star, Shall climb and claim blest immortality.
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Can one generation bind another, and all others, in succession forever? I think not. The Creator has made the earth for the living, not the dead. Rights and powers can only belong to persons, not to things, not to mere matter endowed with will...Nothing is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man.
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Congress has scarcely any thing to employ them, and complain that the place [Washington, D.C.] is remarkably dull.
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If a sect arises whose tenets would subvert morals, good sense has fair play and reasons and laughs it out of doors without suffering the State to be troubled with it.
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To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.
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It is in our lives and not our words that our religion must be read.
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I am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us.
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I am for freedom of religion, and against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendency of one sect over another.
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If ever we are constrained to lift the hatchet against any tribe, we will never lay it down till that tribe is exterminated, or driven beyond the Mississippi... in war, they will kill some of us we shall destroy them all.
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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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Our duty to ourselves, to posterity, and to mankind, call on us by every motive which is sacred or honorable, to watch over the safety of our beloved country during the troubles which agitate and convulse the residue of the world, and to sacrifice to that all personal and local considerations.
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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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Never was so much false arithmetic employed on any subject, as that which has been employed to persuade nations that it is in their interest to go to war.
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Every human being must be viewed according to what it is good for. For not one of us, no, not one, is perfect. And were we to love none who had imperfection, this world would be a desert for our love.
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To be really useful, we must keep pace with the state of society, and not dishearten it by attempts at what its population, means, or occupations will fail in attempting.
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I am mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, the sale of a book can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too.
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