Top 1819 Quotes & Sayings by Thomas Jefferson - Page 31

With respect to our State and federal governments, I do not think their relations correctly understood by foreigners. They generally suppose the former subordinate to the latter. But this is not the case. They are co-ordinate departments of one simple and integral whole.

Sensibility of mind is indeed the parent of every virtue, but it is the parent of much misery, too.

Our public credit is good, but the abundance of paper has produced a spirit of gambling in the funds, which has laid up our ships at the wharves as too slow instruments of profit, and has even disarmed the hand of the tailor of his needle and thimble. They say the evil will cure itself. I wish it may; but I have rarely seen a gamester cured, even by the disasters of his vocation.

...the science of calculation also is indispensable as far as the extraction of the square and cube roots: Algebra as far as the quadratic equation and the use of logarithms are often of value in ordinary cases: but all beyond these is but a luxury; a delicious luxury indeed; but not be in indulged in by one who is to have a profession to follow for his subsistence.

Blest is that nation whose silent course of happiness furnishes nothing for history to say.

Everything is useful which contributes to fix the principles and practices of virtue.

To be really useful, we must keep pace with the state of society, and not dishearten it by attempts at what its population, means, or occupations will fail in attempting.

Without society, and a society to our taste, men are never contented.

A single zealot may commence prosecutor, and better men be his victims.

No one, I hope, can doubt my wish to see... all mankind exercising self-government, and capable of exercising it. But the question is not what we wish, but what is practicable.

Nothing is so disgusting to our sex as want of cleanliness and delicacy in yours.

The best commentary on the principles of government which has ever been written.

Doubts and jealousies often beget the facts they fear.

A pirate spreading misery and ruin over the face of the ocean

The dominion which the banking institutions have obtained over the minds of our citizens...must be broken, or it will break us.

For themselves they fought, for themselves they conquered, and for themselves alone they have they have right to hold.

If some period be not fixed, either by the Constitution or by practice, to the services of the First Magistrate, his office, though nominally elective, will, in fact, be for life, and that will soon degenerate into an inheritance.

The parties of Whig and Tory are those of nature. They exist in all countries, whether called by these names or by those of Aristocrats and Democrats, Cote Droite and Cote Gauche, Ultras and Radicals, Serviles and Liberals. The sickly, weakly, timid man fears the people, and is a Tory by nature. The healthy, strong and bold cherishes them, and is formed a Whig by nature.

Agreeable society is the first essential in constituting the happiness and of course the value of our existence.