Thomas Jefferson Quotes About Meetings

• You and I have formerly seen warm debates and high political passions. But gentlemen of different politics would then speak to each other and separate the business of the Senate from that of society. It is not so now. Men who have been intimate all their lives, cross the streets to avoid meeting, and turn their heads another way, lest they should be obliged to touch their hats. This may do for young men with whom passion is enjoyment. But it is afflicting to peaceable minds. Tranquility is the old man's milk.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Passion, Men, Political

• In our Richmond there is much fanaticism, but chiefly among the women. They have their night meetings and prayer parties, where, attended by their priests, and sometimes by a hen-pecked husband, they pour forth the effusions of their love to Jesus, in terms as amatory and carnal, as their modesty would permit them to use a mere earthly lover.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Jesus, Prayer, Husband

  Thomas Jefferson (2010). “The Works of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence and Papers, 1816-1826”, p.271, Cosimo, Inc.

• I do believe that General Washington had not a firm confidence in the durability of our government. He was naturally distrustful of men, and inclined to gloomy apprehensions; and I was ever persuaded that a belief that we must at length end in something like a British constitution, had some weight in his adoption of the ceremonies of levees, birthdays, pompous meetings with Congress, and other forms of the same character, calculated to prepare us gradually for a change which he believed possible, and to let it come on with as little shock as might be to the public mind.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Believe, Character, Men

  Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies: From the Papers of Thomas Jefferson”, p.237

• 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.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Men, Politics, Association

  Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoir, correspondence, and miscellanies from the papers of T. Jefferson”, p.394

• If anything pass in a religious meeting seditiously and contrary to the public peace, let it be punished in the same manner and no otherwise than as if it had happened in a fair or market.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Religious, Positive Atheism, Meetings

  Thomas Jefferson (2010). “The Works of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence 1771 - 1779, the Summary View, and the Declaration of Independence”, p.267, Cosimo, Inc.

• The whole body of the nation is the sovereign legislative, judiciary, and executive power for itself. The inconvenience of meeting to exercise these powers in person, and their inaptitude to exercise them, induce them to appoint special organs to declare their legislative will, to judge and to execute it. It is the will of the nation which makes the law obligatory.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Exercise, Law, Judging

  Thomas Jefferson (1977). “The Portable Thomas Jefferson”, p.378, Penguin

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