Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Related Quotes

Thomas Jefferson

Public employment contributes neither to advantage nor happiness. It is but honorable exile from one's family and affairs.

Absolute | Design | Experience | Future | Light | Mankind | Object | Right | Will |

Thomas Jefferson

It is while we are young that the habit of industry is formed. If not then, it never is afterward.

Freedom | Mankind | Will |

Thomas Jefferson

It is said that our paper is as good as silver, because we may have silver for it at the bank where it issues. This is not true. One, two, or three persons might have it; but a general application would soon exhaust their vaults, and leave a ruinous proportion of their paper in its intrinsic worthless form.

Justice |

Thomas Jefferson

Some are whigs, liberals, democrats, call them what you please. Others are tories, serviles, aristocrats, andc. The latter fear the people, and wish to transfer all power to the higher classes of society; the former consider the people as the safest depository of power in the last resort; they cherish them therefore, and wish to leave in them all the powers to the exercise of which they are competent.

Attention | Degeneracy | Evil | Good | Government | Health | Liberty | Little | Mankind | Observation | Public | Punishment | Rights | Sound | Truth | Will | World | Government |

Thomas Jefferson

Independence can be trusted nowhere but with the people in mass. They are inherently independent of all but moral law.

God | Justice | God |

Thomas Jefferson

The most successful war seldom pays for its losses.

Government | Justice | Sacred | Government |

Thomas Jefferson

Let what will be said or done, preserve your sang-froid immovably, and to every obstacle, oppose patience, perseverance, and soothing language.

Harmony | Heart | Intolerance | Land | Liberty | Life | Life | Little | Mankind |

Thomas Jefferson

Men have differed in opinion, and been divided into parties by these opinions, from the first origin of societies, and in all governments where they have been permitted freely to think and to speak.

Blessings | Grace | Ignorance | Light | Mankind | Men | Rights | Science | Security | Superstition | Will |

Thomas Jefferson

It is not wisdom alone but public confidence in that wisdom which can support an administration.

Justice | Means | Moderation | Trust | Will | Moderation |

Thomas Jefferson

Man [is] a rational animal, endowed by nature with rights, and with an innate sense of justice; and... he [can] be restrained from wrong and protected in right, by moderate powers, confided to persons of his own choice, and held to their duties by dependence on his own will.

Ambition | Avarice | Duty | Existence | Faith | Genius | God | Mankind | Men | Misfortune | Opinion | People | Possessions | Rights | Teach | Toleration | Will | Misfortune | Ambition | Following | God |

Thomas Jefferson

The genuine and simple religion of Jesus will one day be restored: such as it was preached and practiced by Himself.

Grace | Light | Mankind | Science | Truth |

Thomas Jefferson

Nothing is so mistaken as the supposition that a person is to extricate himself from a difficulty by intrigue, by chicanery, by dissimulation, by trimming, by an untruth, by an injustice. This increases the difficulties tenfold; and those who pursue these methods get themselves so involved at length that they can turn no way by their infamy becomes more exposed.

Important | Justice | Peace | Policy | Principles |

Thomas Jefferson

Opinion, and the just maintenance of it, shall never be a crime in my view.

Credit | Mankind | Will |

Thomas Jefferson

Peace with all nations, and the right which that gives us with respect to all nations, are our object.

Mankind | Friendship |

Thomas Jefferson

Societies exist under three forms, sufficiently distinguishable. 1. Without government, as among our Indians. 2. Under governments, wherein the will of every one has a just influence; as is the case in Enngland, in a slight degree, and in our States, in a great one. 3. Under governments of force; as is the case in all other monarchies, and in most of the other republics. To have an idea of the curse of existance under these last, they must be seen. It is a government of wolves over sheep….The second state has a great deal of good in it. The mass of mankind under that, enjoys a precious degree of liberty and happiness. It has its evils, too; the principal of which is the turbulence to which it is subject. But weigh this against the oppressions of monarchy, and it becomes nothing. Malo periculosum libertatum quam quietum servitutum. Even this evil is productive of good. It prevents the degeneracy of government, and nourishes a general attention to the public affairs. I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. Unsuccessful rebellions, indeed, generally establish the encroachments on the rights of the people, with have produced them. An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions, as not to discourage them too much. It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.

Consequences | Duty |

Thomas Jefferson

The uniform tenor of a man's life furnishes better evidence of what he has said or done on any particular occasion than the word of any enemy.

Conduct | Justice | Love | Principles |

Thomas Jefferson

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with inherent and inalienable rights; that among these, are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed;

Justice | Self-preservation |

Thomas Jefferson

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.

Better | Conduct | Justice | Thought | Trust | Thought |

Thomas Jefferson

We were laboring under a dropsical fullness of circulating medium. Nearly all of it is now called in by the banks, who have the regulation of the safety-valves of our fortunes, and who condense and explode them at their will. Lands in this State cannot now be sold for a year’s rent; and unless our Legislature have wisdom enough to effect a remedy by a gradual diminution only of the medium, there will be a general revolution of property in this state.

Authority | Battle | Duty | Liberty | Mankind | Nations | Right | War | Friends |

Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann

I must tell you that we artists cannot tread the path of Beauty without Eros keeping company with us and appointing himself as our guide.

Art | Enlightenment | Intolerance | Literature | Mankind | Passion | Reason | Rhetoric | Service | Slander | Virtue | Virtue | Slander | Art | Intellect |