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An hereditary aristocracy... will change the form of our governments from the best to the worst in the world.

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
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Hereditary
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The fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follow that, and in its turn wretchedness and oppression.
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Question with boldness even the existence of a god.
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It should be our endeavor to cultivate the peace and friendship of every nation, even of that which has injured us most.
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Nothing is troublesome that we do willingly.
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The patient, treated on the fashionable theory, sometimes gets well in spite of the medicine.
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They are exactly the persons who are to succeed to the government of our country and to rule its future enmities, its friendships and fortunes.
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I have sworn upon the altar of god.
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An industrious farmer occupies a more dignified place in the scale of beings...than a lazy lounger...too proud to work, and drawing out a miserable existence by eating on that surplus of other men's labor.
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It is an axiom in my mind that our liberty can never be safe but in the hands of the people themselves, and that too of the people with a certain degree of instruction. This it is the business of the state to effect, and on a general plan.
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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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I have sometimes asked myself whether my country is the better for my having lived at all? I do not know that it is. I have been the instrument of doing the following things but they would have been done by others some of them, perhaps, a little better.
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A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.
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We are sensible of the duty and expediency of submitting our opinions to the will of the majority, and can wait with patience till they get right if they happen to be at any time wrong.
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It is in our lives and not our words that our religion must be read.
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Truth is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless, by human interposition, disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.
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While old men feel sensibly enough their own advance in years, they do not sufficiently recollect it in those whom they have seenyoung.
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Knowing that religion does not furnish grosser bigots than law, I expect little from old judges.
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By a declaration of rights, I mean one which shall stipulate freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of commerce against monopolies, trial by juries in all cases, no suspensions of the habeas corpus, no standing armies. These are fetters against doing evil which no honest government should decline.
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Free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence it is jealousy, and not confidence, which prescribes limited constitutions, to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power.
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If your letters are as long as the bible, they will appear short to me. Only let them be brim full of affection.
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