Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826) was the principal author of the Declaration of Independence (1776), a statement adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, which announced that the thirteen American colonies then at war with Great Britain were now independent states, and thus no longer a part of the British Empire. He was also the third President of the United States (1801–1809). One of the most influential Founding Fathers, Jefferson envisioned America as a great "Empire of Liberty" that would promote republicanism.
Jefferson idealized the independent yeoman farmer as exemplar of republican virtues, distrusted cities and financiers, and favored states' rights and a limited federal government. Jefferson supported the separation of church and state and was the author of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (1779, 1786). Jefferson's revolutionary view on individual religious freedom and protection from government authority have generated much interest with modern scholars. He was the eponym of Jeffersonian democracy and the co-founder and leader of the Democratic-Republican Party, which dominated American politics for 25 years. [source: wikipedia]
12 AMAZING Thomas Jefferson Quotes
- A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.
- A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men 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.
- All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.
- All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.
- Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.
- Bodily decay is gloomy in prospect, but of all human contemplations the most abhorrent is body without mind.
- Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.
- He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.
- Do not bite at the bait of pleasure, till you know there is no hook beneath it.
- Do you want to know who you are? Don't ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.
- Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.
- Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.
BONUS
Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.
BONUS BONUS
I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.
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