Thomas Jefferson Philosophical Quotes — Page 23

Politician, Founding Father

Philosophical

“And where else will [Hume,] this degenerate son of science, this traitor to his fellow men, find the origin of just powers, if not in the majority of the society? Will it be in the minority? Or in an individual of that minority?”

Men Son Democracy

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Thomas Jefferson

Politician, Founding Father

Philosophical

“Though written constitutions may be violated in moments of passion or delusion, yet they furnish a text to which those who are watchful may again rally and recall the people; they fix too for the people the principles of their political creed.”

People Political Passion

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Philosophical

“The idea is quite unfounded that on entering into society we give up any natural rights.”

Ideas Rights

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Philosophical

“Some other natural rights... [have] not yet entered into any declaration of rights.”

Rights Natural

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Philosophical

“We are firmly convinced, and we act on that conviction, that with nations as with individuals our interests soundly calculated will ever be found inseparable from our moral duties, and history bears witness to the fact that a just nation is trusted on its word when recourse is had to armaments and wars to bridle others.”

War Facts Bears

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Philosophical

“I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.”

Men Rights Progress

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Philosophical

“Of distinction by birth or badge, [Americans] had no more idea than they had of the mode of existence in the moon or planets. They had heard only that there were such, and knew that they must be wrong.”

Ideas Moon Inalienable Rights

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Philosophical

“The art of life is the art of avoiding pain; and he is the best pilot, who steers clearest of the rocks and shoals with which it is beset.”

Art Pain Rocks

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Philosophical

“The monopoly of a single bank is certainly an evil. The multiplication of them was intended to cure it; but it multiplied an influence of the same character with the first, and completed the supplanting the precious metals by a paper circulation. Between such parties the less we meddle the better.”

Character Party Evil

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Philosophical

“It is better to tolerate the rare instance of a parent refusing to let his child be educated, than to shock the common feelings and ideas by forcible asportation and education of the infant against the will of the father.”

Children Father Freedom

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Philosophical

“That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation.”

Men Moving Freedom

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Philosophical

“In a republican nation whose citizens are to be led by reason and persuasion and not by force, the art of reasoning becomes of first importance.... Reason and persuasion are the only practicable instruments. To make way for these, free inquiry must be indulged.... Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them.”

Art Citizens Inquiry

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Thomas Jefferson — Philosophical Quotes

Thomas Jefferson Quotes