More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
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.
“What is practicable must often control what is pure theory,” he said during his presidency; moreover, “the habits of the governed determine in a great degree what is practicable.”
“The most fortunate of us all in our journey through life frequently meet with calamities and misfortunes which may greatly afflict us,” Jefferson once wrote, and “to fortify our minds against the attacks of these calamities and misfortunes should be one of the principal studies and endeavors of our lives.”
“Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity,” Kant wrote.21 “Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another.”
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.
Everyone wants to believe that what they have to say is fascinating, illuminating, and possibly even epochal.
he won’t throw away anything he learns worth knowing.”
Under the law of nature, all men are born free [and] everyone comes into the world with the right to his own person which includes the liberty of moving and using it at his own will.
“may become more useful to my fellow creatures by my death than I have been in my life.
How is a man, as an intrinsically social animal, to live in relative peace and charity with his neighbors in a world given to passion and conflict?
“Non solum nobis, sed patriae”: “Not for ourselves only, but for our country.”
reason, not hereditary right, should govern human affairs. Tyranny was tyranny, whether practiced by kings or priests.
In their parents, children ideally have sources of protection and comfort and love. Parents can also be sources of irritation, fear, and anxiety. Their deaths thus represent both loss and liberation.
The mix of the two emotions can be changeable depending on the hour or the year, but one thing is constant: The parent is gone, which means the child himself, at whatever age, is compelled to assume a measure of the weight of the world commensurate with the passing of time and the increase in responsibility.
The denunciation of slavery was also eliminated. “The clause, too, reprobating the enslaving [of] the inhabitants of Africa, was struck out in complaisance to South Carolina and to Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves, and who on the contrary still wished to continue it,” said Jefferson.
It did not speak well of the power of God, in other words, if He needed a human government to prop him up.
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.”
Life is of no value but as it brings us gratifications. Among the most valuable of these is rational society. It informs the mind, sweetens the temper, cheers our spirits, and promotes health.”
Put into one scale the pleasures which any object may offer; but put fairly into the other the pains which are to follow, and see which preponderates.
Do not bite at the bait of pleasure till you know there is no hook beneath it.
never fear that things will go far wrong where common sense has fair play,”
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.22 But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them.… Do not be too severe upon [the people’s] errors, but reclaim them by enlightening them. If once they become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress, and Assemblies, judges and governors shall
...more
When one or two generations shall have proved that this is an office for life, it becomes on every succession worthy of intrigue, of bribery, of force, and even of foreign interference.”
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.
“If they approve the proposed Convention in all its parts, I shall concur in it cheerfully, in hopes that they will amend it whenever they shall find it work wrong.”
If there were no authority from precedent, no laws governing property or examples to guide us, then society would be reduced to a state of nature in which the strong could thrive most effectively, taking advantage of the disorder to consolidate power.
Jefferson wrote to James Monroe, “We are ruined, Sir, if we do not over-rule the principles that ‘the more we owe, the more prosperous we shall be,’ ‘that a public debt furnishes the means of enterprise,’…etc.38 etc.”
I THINK IT IS MONTAIGNE who has said that ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head,”
it is evident to me that the people are not in a condition either to approve or disapprove of their government, nor consequently to influence it.”
A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight.”
“Our opponents perceive the decay of their power.27 Still they are pressing it, and trying to pass laws to keep themselves in power.”
An evangelical minister, William Scales, took a more optimistic view: “Many declare you an atheist,” Scales wrote to Jefferson, “but be it so, I much rather a liberal atheist should govern the people, than a bigoted saint, who knows not God.”
“The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to written law, would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property and all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the end to the means.”
