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
[Emigrants] will bring with them the principles of the governments they leave, imbibed in their early youth; or, if able to throw off, it will be in exchange for an unbounded licentiousness, passing, as is usual, from one extreme to another. It would be a miracle were they to stop precisely at the point of temperate liberty.
I should . . . prefer swallowing one incomprehensibility rather than two. It requires one effort only to admit the single incomprehensibility of matter endowed with thought, and two to believe, first that of an existence called spirit, of which we have neither evidence nor idea, and then secondly how that spirit, which has neither extension nor solidity, can put material organs into motion.
That the enthusiasm which characterizes youth should lift its parricide hands against freedom and science would be such a monstrous phenomenon as I cannot place among possible things in this age and country.
Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated.
I have ever judged of the religion of others by their lives. For it is in our lives, and not from our works, that our religion must be read.
Political interest [can] never be separated in the long run from moral right.
To every obstacle oppose patience, perseverance and soothing language.
A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for a second; that second for a third; and so on, till the bulk of the society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery, to have no sensibilities left but for sin and suffering.
The selfish spirit of commerce, which knows no country, and feels no passion or principle but that of gain.
No nation is drunken where wine is cheap.
A lively and lasting sense of filial duty is more effectually impressed on the mind of a son or daughter by reading King Lear, than by all the dry volumes of ethics, and divinity that ever were written.
The happiest moments my heart knows are those in which it is pouring forth its affections to a few esteemed characters.
I find friendship to be like wine, raw when new, ripened with age, the true old man's milk and restorative cordial.
The moral sense, or conscience, is as much part of a man as his leg or arm. It is given to all in a stronger or weaker degree.. It may be strengthened by exercise.