Founder's Quote Database | The Patriot Post

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Founders' Quote Database

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Thomas Jefferson

evening July 3; Jefferson died the next morning — 1826
Category: Last Words

Is it the Fourth?

Thomas Jefferson

letter to William Johnson — 1823
Category: Law

Laws are made for men of ordinary understanding and should, therefore, be construed by the ordinary rules of common sense. Their meaning is not to be sought for in metaphysical subtleties which may make anything mean everything or nothing at pleasure.

Thomas Jefferson

letter to John Adams — 1821
Category: Liberty

I will not believe our labors are lost. I shall not die without a hope that light and liberty are on a steady advance.

Thomas Jefferson

letter to Joseph C. Cabell — 1820
Category: Education

All the States but our own are sensible that knowlege is power.

Thomas Jefferson

letter to John Adams — 1821
Category: Declaration of Independence

[T]he flames kindled on the 4 of July 1776, have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism; on the contrary, they will consume these engines and all who work them.

Thomas Jefferson

Declaration of the Causes and Necessities of Taking up Arms — 1775
Category: Liberty

Honor, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us. We cannot endure the infamy and guilt of resigning succeeding generations to that wretchedness which inevitably awaits them if we basely entail hereditary bondage on them.

Thomas Jefferson

Summary View of the Rights of British America — 1774
Category: Liberty

The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them.

Thomas Jefferson

letter to William Stephens Smith — 1787
Category: Liberty

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

Thomas Jefferson

letter to James Monroe — 1823
Category: National Defense

Whatever enables us to go to war, secures our peace.

Thomas Jefferson

Second Inaugural Address — 1805
Category: International Relations

We are firmly convinced, and we act on that conviction, that with nations as with individuals our interests soundly calculated will ever be found inseparable from our moral duties, and history bears witness to the fact that a just nation is trusted on its word when recourse is had to armaments and wars to bridle others.

Thomas Jefferson

letter to Elbridge Gerry — 1797
Category: International Relations

I have been happy... in believing that... whatever follies we may be led into as to foreign nations, we shall never give up our Union, the last anchor of our hope, and that alone which is to prevent this heavenly country from becoming an arena of gladiators.

Thomas Jefferson

First Inaugural Address — 1801
Category: Opinion

[L]et them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.

Thomas Jefferson

letter to M. Correa — 1814
Category: Opinion

The good opinion of mankind, like the lever of Archimedes, with the given fulcrum, moves the world.

Thomas Jefferson

letter to Thomas Jefferson Smith — 1825
Category: Patriotism

Love your neighbor as yourself and your country more than yourself.

Thomas Jefferson

Second Inaugural Address — 1805
Category: Opinion

When right, I shall often be thought wrong by those whose positions will not command a view of the whole ground.

Thomas Jefferson

letter to William Charles Jarvis — 1820
Category: The People

I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.

Thomas Jefferson

letter to Richard M. Johnson — 1808
Category: Political Leaders

I suppose, indeed, that in public life, a man whose political principles have any decided character and who has energy enough to give them effect must always expect to encounter political hostility from those of adverse principles.

Thomas Jefferson

letter to John Dickinson — 1801
Category: Politics and Parties

The greatest good we can do our country is to heal its party divisions and make them one people.

Thomas Jefferson

letter to Caeser Rodney — 1810
Category: The Presidency

In times of peace the people look most to their representatives; but in war, to the executive solely.

Thomas Jefferson

Westmoreland County Petition — 1785
Category: Religion and Morality

Reading, reflection and time have convinced me that the interests of society require the observation of those moral precepts...in which all religions agree.

Thomas Jefferson

on George Washington in a letter to Dr. Walter Jones — 1814
Category: Founders on Founders

His person, you know, was fine, his stature exactly what one would wish, his deportment easy, erect and noble.

Thomas Jefferson

letter to Samuel Miller — 1808
Category: Religious Liberty

I consider the government of the United States as interdicted by the Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions, their doctrines, discipline, or exercises. This results not only from the provision that no law shall be made respecting the establishment or free exercise of religion, but from that also which reserves to the States the powers not delegated to the United States. Certainly, no power to prescribe any religious exercise or to assume authority in any religious discipline has been delegated to the General Government. It must then rest with the States.

Thomas Jefferson

Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 17 — 1782
Category: Religious Liberty

The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

Thomas Jefferson

Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 17 — 1781
Category: Truth

It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself. Subject opinion to coercion: whom will you make your inquisitors?

Thomas Jefferson

Letter to Francis C. Gray — 1815
Category: Republican Government

[A]lthough a republican government is slow to move, yet when once in motion, its momentum becomes irresistible.

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