Thomas Jefferson Quotes About Eyes

• [T]he States can best govern our home concerns and the general government our foreign ones. I wish, therefore . . . never to see all offices transferred to Washington, where, further withdrawn from the eyes of the people, they may more secretly be bought and sold at market.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Eye, Home, Government

• The spirit of 1776 is not dead. It has only been slumbering. The body of the American people is substantially republican. But their virtuous feelings have been played on by some fact with more fiction; they have been the dupes of artful maneuvers, and made for a moment to be willing instruments in forging chains for themselves. But times and truth dissipated the delusion, and opened their eyes.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Eye, People, Voting

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

• Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Eye, Men, Office

  Thomas Jefferson (2004). “Light and Liberty: Reflections on the Pursuit of Happiness”, p.25, Modern Library

• 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 them legitimately, by the grace of god. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.

  Thomas Jefferson

  4th Of July, Eye, Men

  Letter to Roger C.Weightman, 24 June 1826.

• Let the eye of vigilance never be closed.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Eye, Vigilance

  Thomas Jefferson, Henry Augustine Washington (1859). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence. Reports and opinions while secretary of state”, p.212

• May [our Declaration of Independence] be to the world, what I believe it will be (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all), the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government... All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Believe, Eye, Ignorance

  Thomas Jefferson (1943). “Thomas Jefferson: selections from his writings edited, with an introduction”

• Our country is too large to have all its affairs directed by a single government. Public servants at such a distance, and from under the eye of their constituents, must, from the circumstance of distance, be unable to administer and overlook all the details necessary for the good government of the citizens; and the same circumstance, by rendering detection impossible to their constituents, will invite public agents to corruption, plunder and waste.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Country, Distance, Eye

  Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoir, correspondence, and miscellanies from the papers of T. Jefferson”, p.437

• Scenes are now to take place as will open the eyes of credulity and of insanity itself, to the dangers of a paper medium abandoned to the discretion of avarice and of swindlers.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Eye, Insanity, Paper

  Thomas Jefferson (2011). “The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Retirement Series, Volume 7: 28 November 1813 to 30 September 1814”, p.654, Princeton University Press

• 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 in which he is competent ... It is by dividing and subdividing these Republics from the great national one down through all its subordinations until it ends in the administration of everyman's farm by himself, by placing under everyone what his own eye may superintend, that all will be done for the best.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Eye, Government, Liberty

• The colleges of Edinburgh and Geneva as seminaries of science, are considered as the two eyes of Europe. While Great Britain and America give the preference to the former, all other countries give it to the latter.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Country, Eye, College

  Thomas Jefferson (1854). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson”, p.109

• Man is fed with fables through life, and leaves it in the belief he knows something of what has been passing, when in truth he knows nothing but what has passed under his own eyes.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Knowledge, Eye, Men

  Thomas Jefferson (1941). “The Wisdom of Thomas Jefferson: Including the Jefferson Bible, "The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth,"”

• But under the beaming, constant and almost vertical sun of Virginia, shade is our Elysium. In the absence of this no beauty of the eye can be enjoyed.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Beauty, Eye, Virginia

  Thomas Jefferson (1984). “Jefferson: Writings”, p.1541, Library of America

• Nothing can be believed but what one sees, or has from an eye witness.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Eye, Witness

  Thomas Jefferson, Henry Augustine Washington (1853). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence, contin”, p.80

• It has also been a great solace to me, to believe that you are engaged in vindicating to posterity the course we have pursued for preserving to them, in all their purity, the blessings of self-government, which we had assisted too in acquiring for them. If ever the earth has beheld a system of administration conducted with a single and steadfast eye to the general interest and happiness of those committed to it, one which, protected by truth, can never know reproach, it is that to which our lives have been devoted.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Believe, Eye, Blessing

  Thomas Jefferson (2006). “The Essential Jefferson”, p.276, Hackett Publishing

• ...let us save what remains; not by vaults and locks which fence them from the public eye and use in consigning them to the waste of time, but by such a multiplication of copies, as shall place them beyond the reach of accident.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Eye, Locks, Use

  Thomas Jefferson, Jerry Holmes (2002). “Thomas Jefferson: A Chronology of His Thoughts”, p.122, Rowman & Littlefield

• The eyes of our citizens are not sufficiently open to the true cause of our distress. They ascribe them to everything but their true cause, the banking system

  Thomas Jefferson

  Eye, Citizens, Banking

• Communities should be planned with an eye to the effect on the human spirit of being continually surrounded by a maximum of beauty.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Eye, Community, Spirit

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