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Thomas Jefferson QuotesRead some great Thomas Jefferson Quotes from his own letters, speeches and writings. Jefferson is one of the most beloved of America's Revolutionary War heros and was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence. These Thomas Jefferson Quotes are in chronological order and links to more are listed at the bottom.
For a list of interesting Thomas Jefferson facts click here. Thomas Jefferson Quotes"And as for admiration I am sure the man who powders most, parfumes most, embroiders most, and talks most nonsense, is most admired." - Letter to J. Page, December 25, 1762"A little attention however to the nature of the human mind evinces that the entertainments of fiction are useful as well as pleasant. That they are pleasant when well written every person feels who reads. But wherein is its utility asks the reverend sage, big with the notion that nothing can be useful but the learned lumber of Greek and Roman reading with which his head is stored? I answer, everything is useful which contributes to fix in the principles and practices of virtue." - Letter to Robert Skipwith, August 3, 1771 "There we should talk over the lessons of the day, or lose them in Musick, Chess, or the merriments of our family companions. The heart thus lightened, our pillows would be soft, and health and long life would attend the happy scene." - Letter to Robert Skipwith, August 3, 1771 "A lively and lasting sense of filial duty is more effectually impressed on the mind of a son or daughter by reading King Lear, than by all the dry volumes of ethics, and divinity, that ever were written." - Letter to Robert Skipwith, August 3, 1771 "It behooves you, therefore, to think and act for yourself and your people. The great principles of right and wrong are legible to every reader; to pursue them requires not the aid of many counselors. The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest. Only aim to do your duty, and mankind will give you credit where you fail." - ASummary View of the Rights of British America, August, 1774 "A free people claim their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate." - A Summary View of the Rights of British America, August, 1774 "That these are our grievances which we have thus laid before his majesty, with that freedom of language and sentiment which becomes a free people claiming their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate." - A Summary View of the Rights of British America, August, 1774 "The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them." - A Summary View of the Rights of British America, August, 1774 "Our properties within our own territories [should not] be taxed or regulated by any power on earth but our own." - A Summary View of the Rights of British America, August, 1774 "Our attachment to no nation upon earth should supplant our attachment to liberty." - Declaration of the Causes and Necessity for Taking Up Arms, June 26-July 6, 1775 "Honor, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us. We cannot endure the infamy and guilt of resigning succeeding generations to that wretchedness which inevitably awaits them if we basely entail hereditary bondage on them." - Declaration of the Causes and Necessities of Taking up Arms, July 6, 1775 "He (King George III) has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, & murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he u rges them to commit against the lives of another..." - Original draft of the Declaration of Independence, June, 1776 Read on for more
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