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Jefferson believed the will of an educated, enlightened majority should prevail.
Our greatest leaders are neither dreamers nor dictators: They are, like Jefferson, those who articulate national aspirations yet master the mechanics of influence and know when to depart from dogma.
To realize his vision, he compromised and improvised.
Broadly put, philosophers think; politicians maneuver. Jefferson’s genius was that he was both and could do both, often simultaneously. Such is the art of power.
created his own version of the Gospels by excising the New Testament passages he found supernatural or implausible and arranging the remaining verses in the order he believed they should be read.
Yet to his foes, who were numerous and prolific, Jefferson was an atheist and a fanatic, a demagogue and a dreamer, a womanly Francophile who could not be trusted with the government of a great nation.
Jefferson fought for the greatest of causes yet fell short of delivering justice to the persecuted and the enslaved.
I find this hard to read knowing what he did to one, if not more, of his young slave girls.
sometimes paranoids have enemies, and conspiracies are only laughable when they fail to materialize.
It is the strong in body who are both the strong and free in mind.2 —PETER JEFFERSON, the father of Thomas Jefferson
“When young, I was passionately fond of reading books of history, and travels,” Thomas Jefferson wrote.
Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity.…1 Nothing is required for this enlightenment … except freedom; and the freedom in question is the least harmful of all, namely, the freedom to use reason publicly in all matters. —IMMANUEL KANT, “What Is Enlightenment?”
The best news I can tell you is that Williamsburg begins to brighten up and look very clever.2 —PEYTON RANDOLPH
that reason, not revelation or unquestioned tradition or superstition, deserved pride of place in human affairs.19,20
“Knowledge,” Jefferson said, “indeed is a desirable, a lovely possession.”
Jefferson quoted Euripides during the years with Wythe: “There is nothing better than a trusty friend, neither wealth nor princely power; mere number is a senseless thing to set off against a noble friend.”
Our minds were circumscribed within narrow limits by an habitual belief that it was our duty to be subordinate to the mother country.1 —THOMAS JEFFERSON
if that history brought tyranny, it was to be fought at all costs.
Leadership, Jefferson was learning, meant knowing how to distill complexity into a comprehensible message to reach the hearts as well as the minds of the larger world.
Politicians often talk too much and listen too little, which can be self-defeating, for in many instances the surer route to winning a friend is not to convince them that you are right but that you care what they think.
You will perceive that I plead guilty to one of their charges, that when young and single I offered love to a handsome lady.
Harmony in the marriage state is the very first object to be aimed at.1 —THOMAS JEFFERSON
“Much better … if our companion views a thing in a light different from what we do, to leave him in quiet possession of his view.17 What is the use of rectifying him if the thing be unimportant; and if important let it pass for the present, and wait a softer moment and more conciliatory occasion of revising the subject together.”
It was a rich man’s revolution, and Jefferson was a rich man. It was a philosophical revolution, and Jefferson was a philosophical man.
Adams had difficulty holding his tongue or his temper; Jefferson was a master of keeping his emotions in check. Yet the two men—and, in time, Abigail, Adams’s wonderful wife—were to forge one of the greatest and most complicated alliances in American history.
Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.2 —American motto suggested by Jefferson
Jefferson understood a timeless truth: that politics is kaleidoscopic, constantly shifting, and the morning’s foe may well be the afternoon’s friend.
It is error alone that needs the support of government.2 Truth can stand by itself. —THOMAS JEFFERSON, on freedom of religion
As a delegate to the General Assembly in Williamsburg and through his consistent work among his fellow Virginians, cajoling and seeking to convince, Jefferson put himself in a position to effect genuine change—to make the world into something it had not been before.
Jefferson had come to believe the apostolic faith was superstitious and therefore unreasonable—one of the most damning of Jeffersonian indictments.
In political terms, Jefferson believed it unjust (and unwise) to use public funds to support an established church and to link civil rights to religious observance. He said such a system led to “spiritual tyranny.”
Summarizing Locke, Jefferson wrote that “our Savior chose not to propagate his religion by temporal punishments or civil incapacitation”; had Jesus chosen to do so, “it was in his almighty power” to force belief.28 Instead, “he chose to … extend it by its influence on reason, thereby showing to others how [they] should proceed.” Or as Jefferson’s notes on the issue say: Obj[ection].29 Religion will decline if not supported Ans[wer]. Gates of Hell shall not prevail
It did not speak well of the power of God, in other words, if He needed a human government to prop him up.
head of
Madison in
Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.”
shall pursue there the line I have pursued here, convinced that it can never be the interest of any party to do what is unjust, or to ask what is unequal.”
We are not immortal ourselves, my friend; how can we expect our enjoyments to be so? We have no rose without its thorn; no pleasure without alloy.1 —THOMAS JEFFERSON
Monuments de la vie privée des douze Césars and Monuments du culte secret des dames romaines.
Cherish therefore the spirit of our people, and keep alive their attention.1 Do not be too severe upon their errors, but reclaim them by enlightening them. —THOMAS JEFFERSON
Taxes were unequal and haphazardly collected; the heaviest burden of the cost of the Crown and its expensive ways and wars fell less on nobles or clergy, who were largely exempt, and more on commoners, creating understandable tension and popular hostility.5
The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.
“The mass of mankind under that enjoys a precious degree of liberty and happiness. It has its evils too: the principal of which is the turbulence to which it is subject. But weigh this against the oppressions of monarchy, and it becomes nothing.”
Liberty, he was saying, requires patience, forbearance, and fortitude.
“At this moment there is not a gentleman in the states between New Hampshire and Georgia, who does not view the present government with contempt, who is not convinced of its inefficacy, and who is not desirous of changing it for a monarchy.”
Jefferson did not like the omission of a declaration (or bill) of rights to guarantee “freedom of religion, freedom of the press, protection against standing armies, restriction against monopolies, the eternal and unremitting force of the habeas corpus laws, and trials by jury.”
“After all, it is my principle that the will of the majority should always prevail,” he told Madison.67
“There are indeed some faults which revolted me a good deal in the first moment: but we must be contented to travel on towards perfection, step by step,” he wrote in May 1788.69
He desired to bring my mother back to Virginia with him, but she demurred.1
Sex, Jefferson himself once remarked, was “the strongest of the human passions,” and he was not a man to deny himself what he wanted.
here was a girl basically the same age as his own eldest daughter refusing to take her docile part in the long-running drama of the sexual domination of enslaved women by their white masters.
