Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jeffersonwas an American Founding Father who was the principal author of the Declaration of Independence. He was elected the second Vice President of the United States, serving under John Adams and in 1800 was elected the third President. Jefferson was a proponent of democracy, republicanism, and individual rights, which motivated American colonists to break from Great Britain and form a new nation. He produced formative documents and decisions at both the state and national level...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionUS President
Date of Birth13 April 1743
CityShadwell, VA
CountryUnited States of America
The press is the best instrument for enlightening the mind of man, and improving him as a rational, moral and social being
I have ever deemed it more honorable and more profitable, too, to set a good example than to follow a bad one.
I have great confidence in the common sense of mankind in general.
Is it less dishonest to do what is wrong because it is not expressly prohibited by written law? Let us hope our moral principles are not yet in that stage of degeneracy.
I can scarcely contemplate a more incalculable evil than the breaking of the Union into two or more parts.
Certainly one of the highest duties of the citizen is a scrupulous obedience to the laws of the nation. But it is not the highest duty.
Of all exercises, walking is the best.
The movements of nature are in a never ending circle. The animal species which has once been put into a train of motion, is still probably moving in that train. For if one link in nature's chain might be lost, another and another might be lost, till this whole system of things should evanish by piece-meal; a conclusion not warranted by the local disappearance of one or two species of animals, and opposed by the thousands and thousands of instances of the renovating power constantly exercised by nature for the reproduction of all her subjects, animal, vegetable, and mineral.
Nothing is troublesome that we do willingly.
There is not one redeeming feature in our superstition of Christianity. It has made one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites.
No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever.
I place economy among the first and most important virtues and public debt as the greatest dangers to be feared... We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our choice between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude... The same prudence which in private life would forbid our paying money for unexplained projects, forbids it in the disposition of public money. We are endeavoring to reduce the government to the practice of rigid economy to avoid burdening the people.
The only security of all is in a free press.
An informed citizenry is at the heart of a dynamic democracy.