Each Thomas Jefferson Quote on this page comes from his own
personal correspondence with such people as John Adams and Albert Gallatin, the
long time Secretary of the Treasury. This page covers the years of 1814-1819, which
were the height of Jefferson's retirement years, about five to ten years before his
death. Topics covered in these quotes include such things as his love of music
and reading, the fact that the judiciary does NOT have power over the other
branches of government and his hope that slavery would soon be abolished.
Thomas Jefferson was one of the great leaders of the American
Revolution. He wrote the Declaration of Independence, served
as Ambassador to France, Secretary of State, Vice President and was eventually
elected the 3rd President of the United States. Each Thomas Jefferson
Quote on this page is listed chronologically and there are links to more
both before and after this time period at the bottom.
"Dear Sir, Your favor of July 31 (a treatise opposing slavery) was duly received
and was read with peculiar pleasure. The sentiments breathed through the whole do
honor to both the head and heart of the writer. Mine on the subject of slavery of
Negroes have long since been in possession of the public and time has only served
to give them stronger root. The love of justice and the love of country plead
equally the cause of these people, and it is a moral reproach to us that they
should have pleaded it so long in vain... From those of the former generation
who were in the fullness of age when I came into public life, which was while
our controversy with England was on paper only, I soon saw that nothing was to
be hoped. Nursed and educated in the daily habit of seeing the degraded condition,
both bodily and mental, of those unfortunate beings, not reflecting that that
degradation was very much the work of themselves and their fathers, few minds
have yet doubted but that they were as legitimate subjects of property as their
horses and cattle... In the first or second session of the Legislature after I
became a member, I drew to this subject the attention of Col. Bland, one of the
oldest, ablest, and most respected members, and he undertook to move for certain
moderate extensions of the protection of the laws to these people. I seconded his
motion, and, as a younger member, was more spared in the debate; but he was
denounced as an enemy of his country and was treated with the grossest indecorum.
From an early stage of our revolution, other and more distant duties were assigned
to me so that from that time till my return from Europe in 1789, and I may say till
I returned to reside at home in 1809, I had little opportunity of knowing the
progress of public sentiment here on this subject. I had always hoped that the
younger generation, receiving their early impressions after the flame of liberty
had been kindled in every breast and had become as it were the vital spirit of
every American, that the generous temperament of youth, analogous to the motion
of their blood and above the suggestions of avarice, would have sympathized with
oppression wherever found and proved their love of liberty beyond their own share
of it. But my intercourse with them since my return has not been sufficient to
ascertain that they had made towards this point the progress I had hoped... Yet
the hour of emancipation is advancing in the march of time. It will come, whether
brought on by the generous energy of our own minds or by the bloody process...
This enterprise is for the young; for those who can follow it up and bear it
through to its consummation. It shall have all my prayers, and these are the
only weapons of an old man... The laws do not permit us to turn them (the slaves)
loose... I hope then, my dear sir... you will come forward in the public councils,
become the missionary of this doctrine truly Christian; insinuate and inculcate
it softly but steadily through the medium of writing and conversation; associate
others in your labors, and when the phalanx (brigade or regiment) is formed,
bring on and press the proposition perseveringly until its accomplishment. It
is an encouraging observation that no good measure was ever proposed which, if
duly pursued, failed to prevail in the end... And you will be supported by the
religious precept, "be not weary in well-doing" (Galatians 6:9). That your
success may be as speedy and complete, as it will be of honorable and immortal
consolation to yourself, I shall as fervently and sincerely pray." - Letter
to Edward Coles, August 25, 1814
"Bigotry is the disease of ignorance, of morbid minds; enthusiasm of the free
and buoyant. Education & free discussion are the antidotes of both."
- Letter to John Adams, August 1,
1816
"You ask if I mean to publish anything on the subject of a letter of mine to
my friend Charles Thompson? Certainly not. I write nothing for publication,
and last of all things should it be on the subject of religion. On the dogmas
of religion as distinguished from moral principles, all mankind, from the
beginning of the world to this day, have been quarrelling, fighting, burning
and torturing one another, for abstractions unintelligible to themselves and
to all others, and absolutely beyond the comprehension of the human mind.
Were I to enter on that arena, I should only add an unit to the number of
Bedlamites." - Letter to Mathew Carey, November 11, 1816
"I may say Christianity itself divided into it's thousands also, who are
disputing, anathematizing and where the laws permit burning and torturing
one another for abstractions which no one of them understand, and which are
indeed beyond the comprehension of the human mind." - Letter to George
Logan, November 12, 1816
"I hope we shall take warning from the example (of England) and crush in its
birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge
our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws our country."
- Letter to George Logan, November 12, 1816
"The most sacred of the duties of a government is to do equal and impartial
justice to all citizens." - Note in Destutt de Tracy, 1816
"What all agree upon is probably right; what no two agree in most probably is
wrong." - Letter to John Adams, January 11, 1817
"One of our fan-coloring biographers, who paints small men as very great,
inquired of me lately with real affection too, whether he might consider as
authentic, the change of my religion much spoken of in some circles. Now this
supposed that they knew what had been my religion before, taking for it the
word of their priests, whom I certainly never made the confidants of my creed.
My answer was "say nothing of my religion. It is known to my God and myself
alone. Its evidence before the world is to be sought in my life; if that has
been honest and dutiful to society, the religion which has regulated it cannot
be a bad one." - Letter to John Adams, January 11, 1817
"The pamphlet you were so kind as to send me manifests a zeal, which cannot be too much praised, for the interests of agriculture, the employment of our first parents in Eden, the happiest we can follow, and the most important to our country." - Letter to William Johnson, May 10, 1817
"The Pennsylvania legislature, who, on a proposition to make the belief in
God a necessary qualification for office, rejected it by a great majority,
although assuredly there was not a single atheist in their body. And you
remember to have heard, that when the act for religious freedom was before
the Virginia Assembly, a motion to insert the name of Jesus Christ before
the phrase, "the author of our holy religion," which stood in the bill,
was rejected, although that was the creed of a great majority of them."
- Letter to Albert Gallatin, June 16, 1817
"To all of which is added a selection from the elementary schools of subjects
of the most promising genius, whose parents are too poor to give them further
education, to be carried at the public expense through the college and
university. The object is to bring into action that mass of talents which
lies buried in poverty in every country, for want of the means of development,
and thus give activity to a mass of mind, which, in proportion to our population,
shall be double or treble of what it is in most countries." - Letter to Jose
Correa de Serra, November 25, 1817
"I have the consolation to reflect that during the period of my administration
not a drop of the blood of a single fellow citizen was shed by the sword of war
or of the law." - Letter to papal nuncio Count Dugnani, February 14, 1818
"A great obstacle to good education is the inordinate passion prevalent for
novels, and the time lost in that reading which should be instructively employed.
When this poison infects the mind, it destroys its tone and revolts it against
wholesome reading... This mass of trash, however, is not without some distinction;
some few modelling their narratives, although fictitious, on the incidents of real
life, have been able to make them interesting and useful vehicles of sound
morality... For a like reason, too, much poetry should not be indulged. Some
is useful for forming style and taste. Pope, Dryden, Thompson, Shakespeare,
and of the French, Moliére, Racine, the Corneilles, may be read
with pleasure and improvement." - Letter to Nathaniel Burwell, March 14,
1818
"The ornaments too, and the amusements of life, are entitled to their portion of
attention. These, for a female, are dancing, drawing, and music... Music is
invaluable where a person has an ear. Where they have not, it should not be
attempted. It furnishes a delightful recreation for the hours of respite from
the cares of the day, and lasts us through life. The taste of this country, too,
calls for this accomplishment more strongly than for either of the others."
- Letter to Nathaniel Burwell, March 14, 1818
"My repugnance to the writing table becomes daily and hourly more deadly and
insurmountable. In place of this has come on a canine appetite for reading.
And I indulge it, because I see in it a relief against the taedium senectutis;
a lamp to lighten my path through the dreary wilderness of time before me, whose
bourne I see not. Losing daily all interest in the things around us, something
else is necessary to fill the void. With me it is reading, which occupies the
mind without the labor of producing ideas from my own stock." - Letter to
John Adams, May 17, 1818
"To give to every citizen the information he needs for the transaction of his
own business; To enable him to calculate for himself, and to express and preserve
his ideas, his contracts and accounts, in writing; To improve, by reading, his
morals and faculties; To understand his duties to his neighbors and country,
and to discharge with competence the functions confided to him by either; To
know his rights; to exercise with order and justice those he retains; to
choose with discretion the fiduciary of those he delegates; and to notice
their conduct with diligence, with candor, and judgment; And, in general,
to observe with intelligence and faithfulness all the social relations under
which he shall be placed." - Report of the Commissioners for the University
of Virginia, August 4, 1818
"I feel a much greater interest in knowing what has passed two or three thousand
years ago, than in what is now passing. I read nothing, therefore, but of the
heroes of Troy, of the wars of Lacedaemon and Athens, of Pompey and Caesar, and
of Augustus too, the Bonaparte and parricide scoundrel of that day... I slumber
without fear, and review in my dreams the visions of antiquity." - Letter to
Nathaniel Macon, January 12, 1819
"I was a hard student until I entered on the business of life, the duties of
which leave no idle time to those disposed to fulfil them; and now, retired,
and at the age of seventy-six, I am again a hard student. Indeed, my fondness
for reading and study revolts me from the drudgery of letter writing... I am
not so regular in my sleep as the Doctor says he was, devoting to it from five
to eight hours, according as my company or the book I am reading interests me;
and I never go to bed without an hour, or half hour's previous reading of
something moral, whereon to ruminate in the intervals of sleep." - Letter
to Vine Utley, March 21, 1819
"My construction of the
constitution is very different from that you quote. It
is that each department is truly independent of the others, and has an equal
right to decide for itself what is the meaning of the constitution in the cases
submitted to its action; and especially, where it is to act ultimately and
without appeal." - Letter to Samuel Adams Wells, May 12, 1819
"Among the values of classical learning, I estimate the luxury of reading the
Greek and Roman authors in all the beauties of their originals. And why should
not this innocent and elegant luxury take its preëminent stand ahead of
all those addressed merely to the senses? I think myself more indebted to my
father for this than for all the other luxuries his cares and affections have
placed within my reach; and more now than when younger, and more susceptible
of delights from other sources. When the decays of age have enfeebled the
useful energies of the mind, the classic pages fill up the vacuum of ennui,
and become sweet composers to that rest of the grave into which we are all
sooner or later to descend." - Letter to John Brazier, August 24, 1819
"In denying the right they usurp of exclusively explaining the constitution,
I go further than you do, if I understand rightly your quotation from the
Federalist, of an opinion that "the judiciary is the last resort in relation
to the other departments of the government, but not in relation to the rights
of the parties to the compact under which the judiciary is derived." If this
opinion be sound, then indeed is our constitution a complete felo de se. For
intending to establish three departments, co-ordinate and independent, that
they might check and balance one another, it has given, according to this
opinion, to one of them alone, the right to prescribe rules for the government
of the others, and to that one too, which is unelected by, and independent of
the nation. For experience has already shown that the impeachment it has provided
is not even a scarecrow; that such opinions as the one you combat, sent cautiously
out, as you observe also, by detachment, not belonging to the case often, but
sought for out of it, as if to rally the public opinion beforehand to their
views, and to indicate the line they are to walk in, have been so quietly
passed over as never to have excited animadversion, even in a speech of any
one of the body entrusted with impeachment. The constitution, on this hypothesis,
is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist, and
shape into any form they please." - Letter to Judge Spencer Roane, referring
to the Supreme Court having the exclusive right to interpret the Constitution,
September 6, 1819
"It should be remembered as an axiom of eternal truth in politics that whatever
power in any government is independent is absolute also; in theory only, at
first, while the spirit of the people is up, but in practice as fast as that
relaxes. Independence can be trusted nowhere but with the people in mass."
- Letter to Judge Spencer Roane, September 6, 1819
"Each of the three departments has equally the right to decide for itself what
is its duty under the Constitution without any regard to what the others may
have decided for themselves under a similar question." - Letter to Judge
Spencer Roane, September 6, 1819
"My business is to beguile the wearisomeness of declining life, as I endeavor
to do, by the delights of classical reading and of mathematical truths, and by
the consolations of a sound philosophy, equally indifferent to hope and fear."
- Letter to William Short, October 31, 1819
"As you say of yourself, I too am an Epicurian. I consider the genuine (not
the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral
philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us." - Letter to William Short,
October 31, 1819
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