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
Thomas Jefferson quotes about
All men are created equal and have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Knowledge is power...knowled ge is safety...knowle dge is happiness.
The soil is the gift of God to the living.
Travelling is good for your health and necessary for your amusement.
Who better to so softly bind the wound of one, than she who has suffered the wound herself.
A government is republican in proportion as every member composing it has his equal voice in the direction of its concerns, not indeed in person, which would be impracticable beyond the limits of a city or small township, but by representatives chosen by himself and responsible to him at short periods.
What has been the effect of coericion [sic]? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and errors all over the earth... [Instead] reason and persuasion are the only practicable instruments. To make way for these, free inquiry must be indulged; and how can we wish others to indulge it while we refuse it ourselves.
If, in my retirement to the humble station of a private citizen, I am accompanied with the esteem and approbation of my fellow citizens, trophies obtained by the bloodstained steel, or the tattered flags of the tented field, will never be envied. The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government.
A professorship of Theology should have no place in our institution [the University of Virginia]
We must be contented to amuse, when we cannot inform.
If any state in the Union will declare that it prefers separation... to a continuance in union... I have no hesitation in saying, 'let us separate.
Though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be rightful, must be reasonable.
What all agree upon is probably right; what no two agree in most probably is wrong.
Amplification is the vice of modern oratory.