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Thomas Jefferson was born on his father's plantation in Albemarle County, Virginia (1743).
He was just 33 years old when he was chosen to write the Declaration of Independence. He actually suggested John Adams for the job, but Adams replied, "I am obnoxious, suspected, and unpopular. You are very much otherwise. … [Also] you can write 10 times better than I."
In that founding document, Jefferson wrote the famous words, "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." Jefferson hadn't invented the idea of human rights. He was borrowing from contemporary philosophers such as David Hume, Adam Smith, John Locke, and Voltaire. But he was the first person in history to propose founding a new nation on the basis of those human rights.
In addition to being a writer, Jefferson was also a hard-nosed politician, lawyer, naturalist, musician, architect, geographer, inventor, scientist, paleontologist, and philosopher. Jefferson filled his house with scientific gadgets and inventions, collected mastodon bones, and kept detailed notes on the most obscure details of his life, including the daily fluctuation of the barometric pressure. After he missed the start of the solar eclipse in 1811, he designed his own more accurate astronomical clock. He composed all his papers in later life with a device that allowed him to write with two pens at the same time, so that he could keep copies of all the papers he produced.
*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 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 and bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government.
*Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.
*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.
*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 injured friend is the bitterest of foes.
*Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies.
*Be polite to all, but intimate with few.
*Bodily decay is gloomy in prospect, but of all human contemplations the most abhorrent is body without mind.
*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.
*Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto.
*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.
*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.
*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.
*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.
Thomas Jefferson was born on his father's plantation in Albemarle County, Virginia (1743).
He was just 33 years old when he was chosen to write the Declaration of Independence. He actually suggested John Adams for the job, but Adams replied, "I am obnoxious, suspected, and unpopular. You are very much otherwise. … [Also] you can write 10 times better than I."
In that founding document, Jefferson wrote the famous words, "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." Jefferson hadn't invented the idea of human rights. He was borrowing from contemporary philosophers such as David Hume, Adam Smith, John Locke, and Voltaire. But he was the first person in history to propose founding a new nation on the basis of those human rights.
In addition to being a writer, Jefferson was also a hard-nosed politician, lawyer, naturalist, musician, architect, geographer, inventor, scientist, paleontologist, and philosopher. Jefferson filled his house with scientific gadgets and inventions, collected mastodon bones, and kept detailed notes on the most obscure details of his life, including the daily fluctuation of the barometric pressure. After he missed the start of the solar eclipse in 1811, he designed his own more accurate astronomical clock. He composed all his papers in later life with a device that allowed him to write with two pens at the same time, so that he could keep copies of all the papers he produced.
*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 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 and bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government.
*Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.
*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.
*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 injured friend is the bitterest of foes.
*Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies.
*Be polite to all, but intimate with few.
*Bodily decay is gloomy in prospect, but of all human contemplations the most abhorrent is body without mind.
*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.
*Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto.
*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.
*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.
*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.
*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.
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