Thomas Jefferson Quotes About Age

• In every country and in 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.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Country, Religious, Atheist

  Thomas Jefferson (2011). “The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Retirement Series, Volume 7: 28 November 1813 to 30 September 1814”, p.248, Princeton University Press

• 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.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Wise, Government, Debt Free

  Thomas Jefferson, Brett F. Woods (2009). “Thomas Jefferson: Thoughts on War and Revolution : Annotated Correspondence”, p.93, Algora Publishing

• 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.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Country, Ambition, Mean

  Thomas Jefferson, Andrew M. Allison (1983). “The Real Thomas Jefferson”, Natl Center for Constitutional

• This I hope will be the age of experiments in government, and that their basis will be founded in principles of honesty, not of mere force.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Peace, Honesty, War

  Thomas Jefferson (2010). “The Works of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence 1793-1798”, p.219, Cosimo, Inc.

• The Greeks by their laws, and the Romans by the spirit of their people, took care to put into the hands of their rulers no such engine of oppression as a standing army. Their system was to make every man a soldier, and oblige him to repair to the standard of his country whenever that was reared. This made them invincible; and the same remedy will make us so.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Death, Country, Military

  Thomas Jefferson, Joyce Appleby, Terence Ball (1999). “Jefferson: Political Writings”, p.139, Cambridge University Press

• Freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of person under protection of habeas corpus; and trial by juries impartially selected, these principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us, and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Freedom, Age, Trials

  First Inaugural Address, 4 Mar. 1801

• What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man! Who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment & death itself in vindication of his own liberty, and the next moment ... inflict on his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Men, Compassion, Rose

  Letter to Jean Nicholas Demeunier, 24 Jan. 1786

• 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.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Country, Men, Abuse

  Thomas Jefferson (2004). “Light and Liberty: Reflections on the Pursuit of Happiness”, p.74, Modern Library

• Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the ark of the Covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Men, Age, Ark

  1816 Letter to Samuel Kercheval, 12 Jul.

• I find as I grow older that I love those most whom I loved first.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Age, Firsts, Grows

  Thomas Jefferson (2010). “The Works of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence 1786-1787”, p.307, Cosimo, Inc.

• Christian creeds and doctrines, the clergy's own fatal inventions, through all the ages has made of Christendom a slaughterhouse, and divided it into sects of inextinguishable hatred for one another.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Christian, Hatred, Religion

• That the enthusiasm which characterizes youth should lift its parricide hands against freedom and science would be such a monstrous phenomenon as I cannot place among possible things in this age and country.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Country, Freedom, Science

  Letter to William Green Mumford, June 18, 1799.

• Believing that the happiness of mankind is best promoted by the useful pursuits of peace, that on these alone a stable prosperity can be founded, that the evils of war are great in their endurance, and have a long reckoning for ages to come, I have used my best endeavors to keep our country uncommitted in the troubles which afflict Europe, and which assail us on every side.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Country, Peace, War

  Thomas Jefferson, Brett F. Woods (2009). “Thomas Jefferson: Thoughts on War and Revolution : Annotated Correspondence”, p.232, Algora Publishing

• Some men look at Constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them, like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment. I knew that age well; I belonged to and labored with it. It deserved well of its country. It was very like the present, but without the experience of the present; and forty years of experience in Government is worth a century of book-reading; and this they would say themselves, were they to rise from the dead.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Country, Book, Reading

  1816 Letter to Samuel Kercheval, 12 Jul.

• To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of materialism by Locke, Tracy, and Stewart. At what age of the Christian church this heresy of immaterialism, this masked atheism, crept in, I do not know. But heresy it certainly is.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Christian, Religious, Atheist

  Thomas Jefferson (1984). “Jefferson: Writings”, p.1932, Library of America

• I find friendship to be like wine, raw when new, ripened with age, the true old man's milk and restorative cordial.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Friendship, True Friend, Wine

  Thomas Jefferson, Henry Augustine Washington (1854). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and Private : Published by the Order of the Joint Committee of Congress on the Library, from the Original Manuscripts, Deposited in the Department of State”, p.4

• Most men die at age 25, but aren't buried until 70.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Men, Age, Buried

• Chemistry is yet, indeed, a mere embryon. Its principles are contested; experiments seem contradictory; their subjects are so minute as to escape our senses; and their result too fallacious to satisfy the mind. It is probably an age too soon to propose the establishment of a system.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Science, Mind, Age

  Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoir, correspondence, and miscellanies from the papers of T. Jefferson”

• Travelling. ... when men of sober age travel, they gather knowlege which they may apply usefully for their country

  Thomas Jefferson

  Country, Educational, Men

• Sir, Your letter of the 15th is received, but Age has long since obliged me to withhold my mind from Speculations of the difficulty of those of your letter, that their are means of artificial buoyancy by which man may be supported in the Air, the Balloon has proved, and that means of directing it may be discovered is against no law of Nature and is therefore possible as in the case of Birds, but to do this by mechanical means alone in a medium so rare and unassisting as air must have the aid of some principal not yet generally known.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Mean, Men, Air

• It is comfortable to see the standard of reason at length erected, after so many ages, during which the human mind has been held in vassalage by kings, priests, and nobles; and it is honorable for us to have produced the first legislature who had the courage to declare that the reason of man may be trusted with the formation of his own opinions.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Kings, Men, Independence

  Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson (1988). “Paine and Jefferson on Liberty”, p.88, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

• The fumes of the most disordered imaginations were recorded in their religious code, as special communications of the Deity; and as it could not but happen that, in the course of ages, events would now and then turn up to which some of these vague rhapsodies might be accommodated by the aid of allegories, figures, types, and other tricks upon words, they have not only preserved their credit with the Jews of all subsequent times, but are the foundation of much of the religions of those who have schismatised from them.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Religious, Communication, Imagination

  Thomas Jefferson (2017). “LETTERS”, p.1202, 右灰文化傳播有限公司可提供下載列印

• In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Inspirational, Life, Birthday

  "Light and Liberty: Reflections on the Pursuit of Happiness".

• My only fear is that I may live too long. This would be a subject of dread to me.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Time, Fear, Long

  Thomas Jefferson (2010). “The Works of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. IX (in 12 Volumes)”, p.210, Cosimo, Inc.

• The reflections that the boys of this age are to be the men of the next; that they should be prepared to receive the holy charge which we are cherishing to deliver over to them; that in establishing an institution of wisdom for them, we secure it to all our future generations; that in fulfilling this duty, we bring home to our own bosoms the sweet consolation of seeing our sons rising under a luminous tuition, to destinies of high promise; these are considerations which will occur to all.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Sweet, Home, Son

  Thomas Jefferson (1984). “Jefferson: Writings”, p.1945, Library of America

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