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I have given up newspapers in exchange for Tacitus and Thucydides, for Newton and Euclid and I find myself much the happier.

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
Euclid
Newton
Exchange
Happier
Newspapers
Given
Find
Thucydides
Much
Tacitus

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When the course of events shall have removed you to distant scenes of action where laurels not nurtured with the blood of my country may be gathered, I shall urge sincere prayers for your obtaining every honor and preferment which may gladden the heart of a soldier.
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Paul was the first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus.
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Of publishing a book on religion, my dear sir, I never had an idea. I should as soon think of writing for the reformation of Bedlam, as of the world of religious sects. Of these there must be, at least, ten thousand, every individual of every one of which believes all wrong but his own.
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[T]o preserve the republican form and principles of our Constitution and cleave to the salutary distribution of powers which that [the Constitution] has established . . . are the two sheet anchors of our Union. If driven from either, we shall be in danger of foundering.
Thomas Jefferson
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Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto.
Thomas Jefferson
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Still less let it be proposed that our properties within our own territories shall be taxed or regulated by any power on earth but our own.
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Let common sense and common honesty have fair play, and they will soon set things to rights.
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By [the] operations [of public improvement] new channels of communication will be opened between the States the lines of separation will disappear, their interests will be identified, and their union cemented by new and indissoluble ties.
Thomas Jefferson
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An elective despotism was not the government we fought for, but one which should not only be founded on true free principles, but in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among general bodies of magistracy, as that no one could transcend their legal limits without being effectually checked and restrained by the others.
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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.
Thomas Jefferson
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In a world which furnishes so many employments which are useful, and so many which are amusing, it is our own fault if we ever know what ennui [boredom] is, or if we are ever driven to the miserable resource of gaming, which corrupts our dispositions, and teaches us a habit of hostility against all mankind.
Thomas Jefferson
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From forty years' experience of the wretched guess-work of the newspapers of what is not done in open daylight, and of their falsehood even as to that, I rarely think them worth reading, and almost never worth notice.
Thomas Jefferson
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Health is worth more than learning.
Thomas Jefferson
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I am increasingly persuaded that the earth belongs exclusively to the living and that one generation has no more right to bind another to it's laws and judgments than one independent nation has the right to command another.
Thomas Jefferson
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From candlelight to early bedtime, I read.
Thomas Jefferson
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How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened.
Thomas Jefferson
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Nothing betrays imbecility so much as the being insensible of it.
Thomas Jefferson
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The provisions we have made [for our government] are such as please ourselves they answer the substantial purposes of government and of justice, and other purposes than these should not be answered.
Thomas Jefferson
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It is an essential attribute of the jurisdiction of every country to preserve peace, to punish acts in breach of it, and to restore property taken by force within its limits.
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To unequal privileges among members of the same society the spirit of our nation is, with one accord, adverse.
Thomas Jefferson