Thomas' Quotes of the Day

"A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate." - Thomas Jefferson, Rights of British America, 1774

"All the States but our own are sensible that knowledge is power. " - Thomas Jefferson, letter to Joseph C. Cabell, January 22, 1820

"All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression." - Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801

"And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever." - Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 18, 1781

"Experience, however, soon showed in what way they were to become the most dangerous; that the insufficiency of the means provided for their removal gave them a freehold and irresponsibility in office; that their decisions, seeming to concern individual suitors only, pass silent and unheeded by the public at large; that these decisions, nevertheless, become law by precedent, sapping, by little and little, the foundations of the constitution, and working its change by construction, before any one has perceived that that invisible and helpless worm has been busily employed in consuming its substance. In truth, man is not made to be trusted for life, if secured against all liability to account." - Thomas Jefferson, letter to Monsieur A. Coray, Oct 31, 1823