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1743, Apr 21767-18241826, Jul 4
an American Founding Father, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence (1776), and the third President of the United States (1801–1809). He was an ardent proponent of democracy and embraced the principles of republicanism and the rights of the individual. At the beginning of the American Revolution, he represented Virginia in the Continental Congress, and then served as a wartime Governor of Virginia (1779–1781). In May 1785, he became the United States Minister to France and later the first United States Secretary of State, (1790–1793), serving under President George Washington. At the formation of the First Party System in 1792–1793, Jefferson and James Madison, organized the Democratic-Republican Party in opposition to Alexander Hamilton's Federalist Party. He was elected the second Vice President in 1796 in the administration of President John Adams[2]. Jefferson secretly wrote the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions in 1798-1799, which attempted to nullify the Alien and Sedition Acts passed by the Federalist-controlled United States Congress.
 Timeline (25)
11/30/1508-Andrea Palladio, the architect whose work inspired Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, is born
04/13/1743-Future US president and primary drafter of the Declaration of Independence Thomas Jefferson is born in Virginia
03/27/1775-Thomas Jefferson elected to the Continental Congress
06/11/1776-Congress appoints “Committee of Five” (Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston) to draft the Declaration of Independence
09/26/1776-Congress appoints Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and Silas Deane to negotiate treaty with France
06/03/1781-Jack Jouett rides to warn Thomas Jefferson of British attack 
09/26/1789-George Washington appoints Thomas Jefferson as first Secretary of State
03/21/1790-Thomas Jefferson reports to President George Washington in New York as Secretary of State 
03/22/1790-Thomas Jefferson becomes the first U.S. Secretary of State
08/19/1791-Benjamin Banneker sends a letter and his first Almanac to Thomas Jefferson
10/19/1796-Editorial accuses Thomas Jefferson of affair with slave
05/24/1797-Thomas Jefferson inquires about a former flame
02/17/1801-The House of Representatives decides that Thomas Jefferson should become the third president after an electoral tie with Vice Presidential nominee Aaron Burr in one of the most significant presidential elections in american history.
03/04/1801-Thomas Jefferson inaugurated as third president. Outgoing John Adams does not attend, becoming the first of only three presidents to do so
05/14/1801-After Thomas Jefferson refuses to pay $225,000 in tribute, the pasha of Tripoli declares war on the U.S.
01/18/1803-Thomas Jefferson requests funds for expedition by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
02/25/1804-Thomas Jefferson nominated for president at Democratic-Republican caucus 
03/26/1804-Thomas Jefferson presented with a "mammoth loaf" of bread
12/05/1804-Thomas Jefferson re-elected U.S. president/George Clinton2 vice-president
06/13/1807-Thomas Jefferson subpoenaed in Aaron Burr's treason trial
04/19/1809-Thomas Jefferson sells servant to James Madison
10/12/1810-Thomas Jefferson composes romantic letter
05/27/1813-Thomas Jefferson writes to John Adams to notify him that Benjamin Rush died
01/30/1815-Burned Library of Congress reestablished with Thomas Jefferson's 6,500 volumes 
07/04/1826-Both John Adams (age 90) and Thomas Jefferson (age 83) die
 Notes (5)
Politics:
  • Party: Democratic-Republican
  • Vice President: Aaron Burr (1st term), George Clinton (2nd term)
Signers of the US Declaration of Independence:
John Hancock : an American merchant, statesman, and prominent Patriot of the American Revolution. He served as president of the Second Continental Congress...
Josiah Bartlett : an American physician and statesman, delegate to the Continental Congress for New Hampshire, and signatory of the Declaration of Independenc...
William Whipple Jr.: a signatory of the United States Declaration of Independence as a representative of New Hampshire. Whipple was a member of the Continental c...
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US Vice-Presidents:
John Adams [2] (1789-1797): an American lawyer, author, statesman, and diplomat. He served as the second President of the United States (1797–1801), the first Vice Pr...
Thomas Jefferson (1797-1801): an American Founding Father, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence (1776), and the third President of the United States (1...
Aaron Burr (1801-1805): an American politician. He was the third Vice President of the United States (1801–1805), serving during President Thomas Jefferson's first term. B...
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US Presidents:
George Washington (1789-1797): the first President of the United States (1789–97), the Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War, ...
John Adams [2] (1797-1801): an American lawyer, author, statesman, and diplomat. He served as the second President of the United States (1797–1801), the first Vice Pr...
Thomas Jefferson (1801-1809): an American Founding Father, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence (1776), and the third President of the United States (1...
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Jefferson’s Code:
Now I Know

 Mentions (23)
Benjamin Banneker
...successful series of almanacs. He corresponded with Thomas Jefferson, drafter of the United States Declaration of Independence,...
Aaron Burr
...United States (1801–1805), serving during President Thomas Jefferson's first term. Burr served as a Continental Army...
Francois de Callieres
...became a textbook for eighteenth-century diplomacy: Thomas Jefferson had a copy in his library at Monticello. Of this...
George Clinton [2]
...United States from 1805 to 1812, under Presidents Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. He and John C. Calhoun are the...
Richard Cosway
...Italian-born painter Maria Cosway, a close friend of Thomas Jefferson. He painted the future King George IV in 1780 and...
Nicolas Benjamin Delapierre
...believed by some to be the earliest known portrait of Thomas Jefferson.
John Dickinson
...III of Great Britain. When these failed, he reworked Thomas Jefferson's language and wrote the final draft of the 1775...
William Floyd
...was again a presidential elector in 1800, voting for Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr; and in 1804, voting for Thomas...
Jack Jouett
...Revere of the South" for his late night ride to warn Thomas Jefferson, then the governor of Virginia, and the Virginia...
Matthew Harris Jouett
...Motier, the Marquis de Lafayette. Jouett also painted Thomas Jefferson.
Uriah P. Levy
...among some of his fellow naval officers. An admirer of Thomas Jefferson, Levy purchased and began the restoration of...
Robert R. Livingston
...drafted the Declaration of Independence, along with Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Roger Sherman....
Dolley Madison
...she had sometimes performed earlier for the widowed Thomas Jefferson. She also helped to furnish the newly constructed...
George M. Miller
...directory. In 1803 Miller made a profile relief of Thomas Jefferson, possibly in wax, of which a cast survives.
James Monroe
...musket ball to his shoulder. After studying law under Thomas Jefferson from 1780 to 1783, he served as a delegate in...
Gilbert du Motier
...friend of George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and Thomas Jefferson, Lafayette was a key figure in the French Revolution...
Peter Muhlenberg
...at-large representatives from Pennsylvania. President Thomas Jefferson appointed him the supervisor of revenue for Pennsylvania...
John Page
...where he was a friend and closest college classmate of Thomas Jefferson, having exchanged a great deal of correspondence....
Rembrandt Peale
...his likenesses of presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Peale's style was influenced by French Neoclassicism...
John Pickering
...conviction by impeachment. On February 3, 1803, President Thomas Jefferson sent evidence to the House of Representatives...
Zebulon Pike
...he led the Pike Expedition, sent out by President Thomas Jefferson, to explore and document the southern portion of the...
Thomas Sully
...style of Thomas Lawrence, and his subjects included Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams and Gilbert du Motier, the Marquis...
George Wythe
...Philadelphia Convention. Wythe taught and was a mentor to Thomas Jefferson, John Marshall, Henry Clay and other men who...
 Quotes (244) • View in Quotations
A bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular; and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.
A coward is much more exposed to quarrels than a man of spirit.
A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.
A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.
A judiciary independent of a king or executive alone, is a good thing; but independence of the will of the nation is a solecism, at least in a republican government.
A little rebellion now and then is a good thing....
A militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves. They include all men capable of bearing arms. To preserve liberty is essential that the whole body of people always possess arms and be taught alike how to use them.
A morsel of genuine history is a thing so rare as to be always valuable.
A private central bank issuing the public currency is a greater menace to the liberties of the people than a standing army. We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.
A rigid economy of the public contributions and absolute interdiction of all useless expenses will go far towards keeping the government honest and unoppressive.
A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be your constant companion of your walks.
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.
Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.
All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride legitimately, by the grace of God.
All the States but our own are sensible that knowledge is power.
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.
Although in the circle of his friends, where he might be unreserved with safety, he took a free share in conversation his colloquial talents were not above mediocrity, possessing neither copiousness of ideas, nor fluency of words. In public, when called on for a sudden opinion, he was unready, short and embarrassed.
Always take hold of things by the smooth handle.
An association of men who will not quarrel with one another is a thing which has never yet existed, from the greatest confederacy of nations down to a town meeting or a vestry.
An enemy generally says and believes what he wishes.
An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens....There has never been a moment of my life in which I should have relinquished for it the enjoyments of my family, my farm, my friends & books.
An injured friend is the bitterest of foes.
And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever.
And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the priciple of spending money to be paid by posterity, uner the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.
As our enemies have found we can reason like men, so now let us show them we can fight like men also.
At the establishment of our constitutions, the judiciary bodies were supposed to be the most helpless and harmless members of the government. Experience, however, soon showed in what way they were to become the most dangerous; that the insufficiency of the means provided for their removal gave them a freehold and irresponsibility in office; that their decisions, seeming to concern individual suitors only, pass silent and unheeded by the public at large; that these decisions, nevertheless, become law by precedent, sapping, by little and little, the foundations of the constitution, and working its change by construction, before any one has perceived that that invisible and helpless worm has been busily employed in consuming its substance. In truth, man is not made to be trusted for life, if secured against all liability to account.
Be polite to all, but intimate with few.
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and State.
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.
Born in other countries, yet believing you could be happy in this, our laws acknowledge, as they should do, your right to join us in society, conforming, as I doubt not you will do, to our established rules. That these rules shall be as equal as prudential considerations will admit, will certainly be the aim of our legislatures, general and particular.
But every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have been called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists
But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life, and thanks to a benevolent arrangement the greater part of life is sunshine.
But of all the views of this law none is more important, none more legitimate, than that of rendering the people the safe, as they are the ultimate, guardians of their own liberty. For this purpose the reading in the first stage, where they will receive their whole education, is proposed, as has been said, to be chiefly historical. History by apprising them of the past will enable them to judge of the future; it will avail them of the experience of other times and other nations; it will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men; it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume; and knowing it, to defeat its views.
But with respect to future debt; would it not be wise and just for that nation to declare in the constitution they are forming that neither the legislature, nor the nation itself can validly contract more debt, than they may pay within their own age, or within the term of 19 years.
Cherish, therefore, the spirit of our people, and keep alive their attention. Do not be too severe upon their errors, but reclaim them by enlightening them. If once they become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress, and Assemblies, Judges, and Governors, shall all become wolves.
Christianity neither is, nor ever was, a part of the common law.
Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto.
Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare but only those specifically enumerated.
Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government.
Delay is preferable to error.
Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.
Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time, who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done, if we are always doing. And that you may be always doing good, my dear, is the ardent prayer of yours affectionately.
Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of a Censor - over each other.
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.
Don't talk about what you have done or what you are going to do.
During the course of administration, and in order to disturb it, the artillery of the press has been leveled against us, charged with whatsoever its licentiousness could devise or dare. These abuses of an institution so important to freedom and science are deeply to be regretted, inasmuch as they tend to lessen its usefulness and to sap its safety.
Educate and inform the whole mass of the people. Enable them to see that it is their interest to preserve peace and order, and they will preserve them. 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.
Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever persuasion, religious or political.
Errors of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.
Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state.
Every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle
Every generation needs a new revolution.
Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories.
Every one must act according to the dictates of his own reason, and mine tells me that civil powers alone have been given to the President of the United States, and no authority to direct the religious exercises of his constituents.
Every State has a natural right in cases not within the compact (casus non faederis) to nullify of their own authority all assumptions of power by others within their limits. Without this right, they would be under the dominion, absolute and unlimited, of whosoever might exercise this right of judgment for them.
Everyone has a natural right to choose that vocation in life which he thinks most likely to give him comfortable subsistence
Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor.
Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.
Experience having long taught me the reasonableness of mutual sacrifices of opinion among those who are to act together for any common object, and the expediency of doing what good we can; when we cannot do all we would wish.
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.
For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their best security.
For example. If the system be established on basis of Income, and his just proportion on that scale has been already drawn from every one, to step into the field of Consumption, and tax special articles in that, as broadcloth or homespun, wine or whiskey, a coach or a wagon, is doubly taxing the same article. For that portion of Income with which these articles are purchased, having already paid its tax as Income, to pay another tax on the thing it purchased, is paying twice for the same thing; it is an aggrievance on the citizens who use these articles in exoneration of those who do not, contrary to the most sacred of the duties of a government, to do equal and impartial justice to all its citizens.
For I agree with you that there is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents.
Force is the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism.
Freedom of discussion, unaided by power, is… sufficient for the propagation and protection of truth
Friendship is but another name for an alliance with the follies and the misfortunes of others. Our own share of miseries is sufficient: why enter then as volunteers into those of another?
Give up money, give up fame, give up science, give the earth itself and all it contains rather than do an immoral act. And never suppose that in any possible situation, or under any circumstances, it is best for you to do a dishonorable thing, however slightly so it may appear to you... From the practice of the purest virtue, you may be assured you will derive the most sublime comforts in every moment of life, and in the moment of death.
Happiness is not being pained in body or troubled in mind.
Harmony in the married state is the very first object to be aimed at
He who is permitted by law to have no property of his own, can with difficulty conceive that property is founded in anything but force.
He who knows best knows how little he knows.
He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.
He [King George] has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred right of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither.
His temper was excellent, and he generally observed decorum in debate. On one or two occasions I have seen him angry, and his anger was terrible; those who witnessed it, were not disposed to rouse it again.
History, in general, only informs us of what bad government is.
Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.
Honour, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us. We cannot endure the infamy and guilt of resigning succeeding generations to that wretchedness which inevitably awaits them, if we ba...sely entail hereditary bondage upon them.
How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened.
I abhor war and view it as the greatest scourge of mankind.
I am a Christian, that is to say a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus. I have little doubt that our whole country will soon be rallied to the unity of our Creator and, I hope, to the pure doctrine of Jesus also.
I am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greek and Roman leave to us.
I am mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, the sale of a book can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too.
I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.
I believe that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another.
I cannot live without books.
I consider the people who constitute a society or a nation as the source of all authority in that nation
I deem one of the essential principles of our government: equal and exact justice to all men of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political
I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature.
I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it.
I find that he is happiest of whom the world says least, good or bad.
I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.
I have no ambition to govern men; it is a painful and thankless office.
I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master.
I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition (Christianity) one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology.
I have seen enough of one war never to wish to see another.
I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.
I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be.
I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.
I know but one code of morality for men, whether acting singly or collectively. He who says I will be a rouge when I act in company with a hundred others, but an honest man when I act alone, will be believed in former assertion, but not in the latter… if the morality of one man produces a just line of conduct in him, acting individually, why should not the morality of one hundred men produce a just line of conduct in them, acting together?
I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of Constitutional power.
I know that the acquisition of Louisiana has been disapproved by some ... that the enlargement of our territory would endanger its union.... The larger our association the less will it be shaken by local passions; and in any view is it not better that the opposite bank of the Mississippi should be settled by our own brethren and children than by strangers of another family?
I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.
I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.
I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others.
I own that I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.
I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.
I think with the Romans, that the general of today should be a soldier tomorrow if necessary.
I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.
I view great cities as pestilential to the morals, the health, and the liberties of man.
I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led, and bearding every authority which stood in their way.
I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.
I'm a great believer in luck and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.
If God is just, I tremble for my country.
If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour?
If there is one principle more deeply rooted in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest.
If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them, they must become happy.
Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong.
In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own. It is easier to acquire wealth and power by this combination than by deserving them, and to effect this, they have perverted the purest religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind, and therefore the safer for their purposes.
In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.
In questions of power then let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.
In truth, politeness is artificial good humor, it covers the natural want of it, and ends by rendering habitual a substitute nearly equivalent to the real virtue.
Information is the currency of democracy.
It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.
It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God.
It is always better to have no ideas than false ones; to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong.
It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.
It is in our lives and not our words that our religion must be read.
It is in the love of one's family only that heartfelt happiness is known. By a law of our nature, we cannot be happy without the endearing connections of a family
It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world. It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.
It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.
It is neither wealth nor splendor; but tranquility and occupation which give you happiness.
It is of great importance to set a resolution, not to be shaken, never to tell an untruth. There is no vice so mean, so pitiful, so contemptible; and he who permits himself to tell a lie once finds it much easier to do it a second, and third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world’s believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions.
It is our duty still to endeavor to avoid war; but if it shall actually take place, no matter by whom brought on, we must defend ourselves. If our house be on fire, without inquiring whether it was fired from within or without, we must try to extinguish it.
It takes time to persuade men to do even what is for their own good.
Its soul, its climate, its equality, liberty, laws, people, and manners. My god! how little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy!
Leave all the afternoon for exercise and recreation, which are as necessary as reading. I will rather say more necessary because health is worth more than learning.
Leave no authority existing not responsible to the people.
Liberty is to the collective body, what health is to every individual body. Without health no pleasure can be tasted by man; without liberty, no happiness can be enjoyed by society.
Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains.
Money, not morality, is the principle commerce of civilized nations.
My only fear is that I may live too long. This would be a subject of dread to me.
My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.
My theory has always been, that if we are to dream, the flatteries of hope are as cheap, and pleasanter, than the gloom of despair.
Nature intended me for the tranquil pursuits of science, by rendering them my supreme delight. But the enormities of the times in which I have lived have forced me to take a part in resisting them, and to commit myself on the boisterous ocean of political passions.
Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.
Never spend your money before you have earned it.
No duty the Executive had to perform was so trying as to put the right man in the right place.
No Freeman shall ever be disbarred from the use of arms. Arms in the hands of citizens may be used at individual discretion in private self-defense.
No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free no one ever will.
No man will ever carry out of the Presidency the reputation which carried him into it.
No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of the garden.
Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.
Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.
Nothing is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man.
On every unauthoritative exercise of power by the legislature must the people rise in rebellion or their silence be construed into a surrender of that power to them? If so, how many rebellions should we have had already?
One man with courage is a majority.
One travels more usefully when alone, because he reflects more.
Only aim to do your duty, and mankind will give you credit where you fail.
Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry.
Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence.
Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed us, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits.
Peace and abstinence from European interferences are our objects, and so will continue while the present order of things in America remain uninterrupted.
Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy, and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it.
Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none.
Politics is such a torment that I advise everyone I love not to mix with it.
Power is not alluring to pure minds.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes ... but when a long train of abuses and usurpations ... evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security
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 blind-folded fear.
Resort is hard to ridicule only when reason is against us.
Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.
Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day; but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers, too plainly prove a deliberate, systematical plan of reducing us to slavery
So confident am I in the intentions, as well as wisdom, of the government, that I shall always be satisfied that what is not done, either cannot, or ought not to be done.
Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.
Speeches that are measured by the hour will die with the hour.
Taste cannot be controlled by law.
That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.
That government is the strongest of which every man feels himself a part.
The advertisement is the most truthful part of a newspaper.
The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave.
The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.
The Creator has not thought proper to mark those in the forehead who are of stuff to make good generals. We are first, therefore, to seek them blindfold, and then let them learn the trade at the expense of great losses.
The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.
The earth belongs to the living, not to the dead.
The glow of one warm thought is to me worth more than money.
The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time.
The good opinion of mankind, like the lever of Archimedes, with the given fulcrum, moves the world.
The greatest [calamity] which could befall [us would be] submission to a government of unlimited powers.
The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.
The moment a person forms a theory, his imagination sees in every object only the traits which favor that theory.
The most effectual means of preventing [the perversion of power into tyranny are] to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large, and more especially to give them knowledge of those facts which history exhibits, that possessed thereby of the experience of other ages and countries, they may be enabled to know ambition under all its shapes, and prompt to exert their natural powers to defeat its purposes.
The most successful war seldom pays for its losses.
The natural cause of the human mind is certainly from credulity to skepticism.
The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.
The people… to be encouraged in all cases to follow truth as the only safe guide, and to eschew error, which bewilders us in one false consequence after another in endless succession
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind.
The second office in the government is honorable and easy; the first is but a splendid misery.
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.
The spirit of this country is totally adverse to a large military force.
The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
The way to have good and safe government is not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to everyone exactly the functions he is competent [to perform best].
The way to silence religious disputes is to take no notice of them.
The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest
The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it.
The world is indebted for all triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression.
There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents.
There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me.
There is not a truth existing which I fear... or would wish unknown to the whole world.
Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.
To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.
To penetrate and dissipate these clouds of darkness, the general mind must be strengthened by education.
Truth and reason are eternal. They have prevailed. And they will eternally prevail; however, in times and places they may be overborne for a while by violence, military, civil, or ecclesiastical
Truth is certainly a branch of morality and a very important one to society.
Truth is great and will prevail if left to herself;… she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflicts unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.
Truth will do well enough if left to shift for herself. She seldom has received much aid from the power of great men, to whom she is rarely know and seldom welcome. She has no need of force to procure entrance into the minds of men
Walking is the best possible exercise. Habituate yourself to walk very fast.
War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses.
We are bound to defray expenses [of the war] within our own time, and are unauthorized to burden posterity with them.... We shall all consider ourselves morally bound to pay them ourselves and consequently within the life [expectancy] of the majority
We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed.
We did not raise armies for glory or for conquest.
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
We may consider each generation as a distinct nation, with a right, by the will of its majority, to bind themselves, but none to bind the succeeding generation, more than the inhabitants of another country.
We never repent of having eaten too little.
Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.
When a man assumes a public trust he should consider himself a public property.
When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another, and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.
When angry count to ten before you speak. If very angry, count to one hundred.
When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe.
When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on.
Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct.
Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.
Whenever you do a thing, act as if all the world were watching.
Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.
Wisdom I know is social. She seeks her fellows. But Beauty is jealous, and illy bears the presence of a rival.
You seem ... to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions; a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy... The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal.
 Contemporaries
Category
Nationality
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Selected
91
Thomas Jefferson1743, Apr 21767
 
18241826, Jul 4
François de Cuvillies1695, Oct 231724
 
17681768, Apr 14
 a Belgian-born Bavarian decorative designer and architect who was instrumental in bringing the Ro...
Luigi Vanvitelli1700, May 121732
 
17691773, Mar 1
 an Italian engineer and architect. The most prominent 18th-century architect of Italy, he practis...
Bernardo Vittone1704, Aug 191732
 
17691770, Oct 19
 an Italian architect and writer. He was one of the three most important Baroque architects active...
Jose Ramirez de Arellano17051740
 
17701770, Mar 27
 a Spanish Baroque architect and sculptor. He was the son of the sculptor Juan Ramírez Mejandre, ...
Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli17001721
 
17711771, Apr 29
 an Italian architect whose entire career was spent in Russia. He developed an easily recognizable...
Peter Harrison17161747
 
17721775
 a colonial American architect who was born in York, England and emigrated to Rhode Island. Peter ...
William Buckland17341755
 
17731774
 an architect who designed in colonial Maryland and Virginia. Most notable among his repertoire ar...
Ange-Jacques Gabriel1698, Oct 231728
 
17771782, Jan 4
 the most prominent French architect of his generation. His sober rationality in planning and deta...
John Douglas1709 ca1730
 
17791778, Jun 20
 a Scottish architect who designed and reformed several country houses in the Scottish Lowlands. H...
Charles Ribartunknown1750
 
1779unknown
 an 18th-century French architect. In 1758, he planned an addition to the Champs-Élysées in Pari...
John Wood the Younger1728, Feb 251750
 
17791782, Jun 18
 an English architect, working principally in the city of Bath, Somerset. He was the son of the ar...
Jacques-Germain Soufflot1713, Jul 221750
 
17801780, Aug 29
 a French architect in the international circle that introduced neoclassicism. His most famous wor...
John Gwynn17131749
 
17811786, Feb 28
 an English architect and civil engineer, who became one of the founder members of the Royal Acade...
Antonio Rinaldi1710 ca1751
 
17841794, Apr 10
 an Italian architect, trained by Luigi Vanvitelli, who worked mainly in Russia. His first importa...
Sir Robert Taylor17141740
 
17881788
 a notable English architect of the mid-late 18th century. Among his earliest projects was Asgill ...
Thomas Sandby17211740
 
17891798, Jun 25
 an English draughtsman, watercolour artist, architect and teacher. In 1743 he was appointed priva...
Etienne-Louis Boullee1728, Feb 121762
 
17901799, Feb 4
 a visionary French neoclassical architect whose work greatly influenced contemporary architects. ...
Robert Adam1728, Jul 31746
 
17921792, Mar 3
 a Scottish neoclassical architect, interior designer and furniture designer. Robert Adam was a le...
Nicolas-Henri Jardin1720, Mar 221738
 
17931799, Aug 31
  a neoclassical architect, was born in St. Germain des Noyers, Dept. Seine-et-Marne, France, and...
Henry Emlyn17291781
 
 
17951815, Dec 10
 an English architect. Emlyn published A Proposition for a new Order in Architecture, with rules f...
Sir William Chambers1723, Feb 231740
 
17961796, Mar 10
 a Scottish-Swedish architect, based in London. Among his best-known works are Somerset House, Lon...
Januarius Zick1730, Feb 61750
 
17971797, Nov 14
 a painter and architect. He is considered to be one of the main masters of the Late-Baroque. Janu...
Johann Joseph Thalherr17301750
 
17981801, Oct 16
 an Austrian architect. He is one of the main representatives of the Palladian revival in Central ...
John Carr of York17231752
 
17991807
 a prolific English architect. Best known for Buxton Crescent and Harewood House, much of his work...
Richard Jupp17281755
 
17991799, Apr 17
 an 18th-century English architect, particularly associated with buildings in and around London. H...
James Bloodworth1759, Mar 71788
 
 
18031804, Mar 21
 A master bricklayer and builder responsible for the construction of most of the buildings in the ...
Laurent-Benoît Dewez1731, Apr 141758
 
18041812, Nov 1
 a Belgian architect of Walloon origin. He is considered the most influential architect in the Aus...
Joseph Bonomi the Elder1739, Jan 191768
 
 
18041808, Mar 9
 an Italian architect and draughtsman who spent most of his career in England where he became a su...
Charles Percier1764, Aug 221784
 
 
18041838, Sep 5
 a neoclassical French architect, interior decorator and designer, who was one of the inventors an...
Alexandre-Théodore Brongniart1739, Feb 151782
 
 
18071813, Jun 6
  a prominent French architect. Alexandre-Théodore Brongniart designed hotels, including the Hôt...
Giuseppe Piermarini1734, Jul 181765
 
18081808, Feb 18
 an Italian architect who trained with Luigi Vanvitelli at Rome and designed the Teatro alla Scala...
Nicolai Abraham Abildgaard1743, Sep 111764
 
18091809, Jun 4
 a Danish neoclassical and royal history painter, sculptor, architect, and professor of painting, ...
Aleijadinho1730/381770
 
 
18091814, Nov 18
 noted for his works on and in various churches of Brazil. Within a very short time he had become ...
Samuel McIntire1757, Jan 161780
 
 
18091811, Feb 6
 an American architect and craftsman, Chestnut Street District, a legacy to one of the earliest ar...
Ezra Weeksunknown1800
 
 
1809unknown
 a successful builder who served as a witness in a sensationalized murder trial. John McComb, the...
Michael Searles17501780
 
 
18131813
 famous as an English commercial architect of large houses, particularly in London. His most notab...
Giacomo Quarenghi1744, Sep 20/211770
 
 
18171817, Feb 18
 was the foremost and most prolific practitioner of Palladian architecture in Imperial Russia, par...
Levi Weeks17761800
 
 
18191819
 the accused in the infamous Manhattan Well Murder trial of 1800, the first murder trial in the Un...
Benjamin Henry Latrobe1764, May 11784
 
 
18201820, Sep 3
 a British subject and neoclassical architect. In his thirties, he emigrated to the new United Sta...
Barthelemy Lafon17691790
 
 
18201820, Sep 29
 a notable Creole architect, engineer, city planner, and surveyor in New Orleans, Louisiana. He ap...
Joseph Christian Lillie1760, Mar 201775
 
18271827, Jan 29
 a Danish neoclassical architect and interior designer. His early career was in Denmark, where he ...
William Thornton1759, May 201789
 
18281828, Mar 28
 a British-American physician, inventor, painter and architect who designed the United States Capi...
Mary Townley17531770
 
18291839
 she designed several buildings in Ramsgate in the late 18th century, making her one of England's ...
James Hoban1758 ca1779
 
18291831, Dec 8
 an Irish architect, best known for designing the White House in Washington, D.C. He excelled in h...
John McComb Jr.17631792
 
18291853
 an American architect who designed many landmarks in the 18th and 19th centuries. McComb's father...
Joao Frederico Ludovice16731698
 
1831752
 a German born architect and goldsmith. Ludovice was born in Hohenhart. In 1698 he went to Italy, ...
John Nash1752, Jan 181778
 
18301835, May 13
 a British architect responsible for much of the layout of Regency London under the patronage of t...
John Soane1753, Sep 101780
 
18321837, Jan 20
 an English architect who specialised in the Neo-Classical style. The son of a bricklayer, he rose...
Charles Bulfinch1763, Aug 81788
 
18321844, Apr 15
 an early American architect, and has been regarded by many as the first native-born American to p...
Thomas Telford1757, Aug 91771
 
18341834, Sep 2
 a Scottish civil engineer, architect and stonemason, and road, bridge and canal builder. After es...
Christian Heinrich Nebbien17781783
 
18391841
  a German-born landscaping architect, mainly active in Austria. He also wrote a book on the metho...
Joseph-Jacques Ramee1764, Apr 261790
 
18391842, May 18
 a French architect, interior designer, and landscape architect working within the neoclassicist i...
William Wilkins1778, Aug 311804
 
18391839, Aug 31
 an English architect, classical scholar and archaeologist. He designed the National Gallery and U...
Karl Friedrich Schinkel1781, Mar 131805
 
18391841, Oct 9
 a Prussian architect, city planner, and painter who also designed furniture and stage sets. Schin...
Vasily P. Stasov1769, Aug 41810
 
18391848, Sep 5
 a Russian architect. He extensively travelled in France and Italy, where he became professor at t...
Giovanni Paolo Panini1691, Jun 171710
 
1841765, Oct 21
 a painter and architect, who worked in Rome and is mainly known as one of the vedutisti ("view pa...
Lauritz de Thurah1706, Mar 41725
 
1841759, Sep 5
 a Danish architect and architectural writer. He became the most important Danish architect of the...
Asher Benjamin1773, Jun 151794
 
18411845, Jul 26
 an American architect and author whose work transitioned between Federal style architecture and t...
Giuseppe Jappelli1783, May 141819
 
18421852, May 8
 an Italian neoclassic architect and engineer who was born and died in Venice. He studied at the C...
Ithiel Town1784, Oct 31810
 
18431844, Jun 13
 a prominent American architect and civil engineer. One of the first generation of professional ar...
Friedrich Ludwig Persius1803, Feb 151817
 
18451845, Jul 12
 a Prussian architect and a student of Karl Friedrich Schinkel. Persius assisted Schinkel with, am...
George Webster1797, May 31818
 
18451864, Apr 16
 an English architect who practised in Kendal, which was at the time in Westmorland, and later in ...
William Burn1789, Dec 201811
 
18461870, Feb 15
 a Scottish architect, pioneer of the Scottish Baronial style. A talented architect, he received m...
Carlo Rossi1775, Dec 181795
 
18491849, Apr 18
 an Italian architect, who worked the major portion of his life in Russia. He was the author of ma...
Leo von Klenze1784, Feb 291808
 
18491864, Jan 26
 a German neoclassicist architect, painter and writer. Court architect of Bavarian King Ludwig I, ...
Richard Lane1795, Apr 31821
 
18491880, May 25
 a distinguished English architect of the early and mid-19th century. Born in London and based in ...
Alexander Parris1780, Nov 241801
 
18501852, Jun 16
 a prominent American architect-engineer. Beginning as a housewright, he evolved into an architect...
Abdallah Khanunknown1810
 
1850unknown
 a Persian painter and architect, active between 1810 and 1850 in Tehran. He received his apprenti...
John Frazee1790, Jul 181820
 
18501852, Feb 24
 an American sculptor and architect. The Smithsonian has a collection of many of his sculptures as...
Pierre François Leonard Fontaine1762, Sep 201794
 
18531853, Oct 10
 a neoclassical French architect, interior decorator and designer. Starting in 1794 Fontaine worke...
William Strickland1788, Nov1800
 
18531854, Apr 6
 a noted architect in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Nashville, Tennessee. A student of Benjamin ...
Robert Mills1781, Aug 121800
 
18551855, Mar 3
 known for designing the Washington Monument, is sometimes called the first native born American t...
Thomas Cubitt1788, Feb 251810
 
18551855, Dec 20
 was the leading master builder in London in the second quarter of the 19th century, and also carr...
Gustav Friedrich Hetsch1788, Sep 281815
 
18571864, Sep 7
 a Danish architect of German origin. Though most of his accomplishments were in the area of decor...
Philip Hardwick1792, Jun 151819
 
18571870, Dec 28
 an English architect, particularly associated with railway stations and warehouses in London and ...
Sir Charles Barry1795, May 231812
 
18581860, May 12
 an English architect, best known for his role in the rebuilding of the Palace of Westminster (als...
Auguste de Montferrand1786, Jan 231815
 
18581858, Jul 10
 a French Neoclassical architect who worked primarily in Russia. His two best known works are the ...
William Hosking1800, Nov 261820
 
18611861, Aug 2
 an English writer, lecturer, and architect who had an important influence on the growth and devel...
Ignatius Bonomi17871817
 
18621870
 an English architect and surveyor, strongly associated with Durham in north-east England. Bonomi...
John Dobson1787, Dec 91811
 
18631865, Jan 8
 a 19th-century English architect in the neoclassical tradition. He became the most noted architec...
Enrico Marconi1792, Jan 71822
 
18631863, Feb 21
 an Italian architect who spent most of his life in Congress Poland. He was commissioned by genera...
Joseph Paxton1803, Aug 31823
 
18651865, Jun 8
 an English gardener, architect and Member of Parliament, best known for designing The Crystal Pal...
Anton Pius Riegel1789, Dec 51810
 
18681868, Aug 7
 an Austrian architect of the 19th century. He is mainly known for the design of the Károlyi pala...
Henri Labrouste1801, May 111821
 
18681875, Jun 24
 a French architect from the famous École des Beaux-Arts school of architecture. After a six-year...
Antoine-Louis Barye1796, Sep 241810
 
18691875, Jun 25
 an Italian painter and architect of the early-Baroque period, active in Rome and Spain, where he ...
Decimus Burton1800, Sep 301818
 
18691881, Dec 14
 a prolific English architect and garden designer. Also, particularly associated with projects in...
Edward Blore1787, Sep 131811
 
18741879, Sep 4
 a 19th-century British landscape and architectural artist, architect and antiquary. In 1826, he w...
Alexander Jackson Davis1803, Jul 241820
 
18781892, Jan 14
 was one of the most successful and influential American architects of his generation, known parti...
Lewis Cubitt1799, Sep 291820
 
18791883, Jun 9
 an English civil engineer, he was a younger brother of Thomas Cubitt. He built many bridges in hi...
Sir James Pennethorne1801, Jun 41820
 
18791871, Sep 1
 a 19th-century English architect and planner, particularly associated with buildings and parks in...
Robert Mylne1733, Jan 41758
 
1891811, May 5
 a Scottish architect and civil engineer, particularly remembered for his design for Blackfriars B...
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