Happy Independence Day, everybody. In honor of this important day, I'm posting some of my favorite quotes from the primary author of the Declaration of Independence. Interestingly, Thomas Jefferson died on the 50th Anniversary of the Declaration, July 4th, 1826.
"A free people claim their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their magistrate."
"I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us that the less we use our power the greater it will be."
"A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both, and deserve neither"
"Money, not morality, is the principle of commerce and commercial nations"
"The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers."
"Dissent is the highest form of patriotism"
"On the dogmas of religion, as distinguished from moral principles, all mankind, from the beginning of the world to this day, have been quarreling, fighting, burning and torturing one another, for abstractions unintelligible to themselves and to all others, and absolutely beyond the comprehension of the human mind."
"There is...an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents.... The artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient in government, and provisions should be made to prevent its ascendancy."
"I live for books."
"It is as useless to argue with those who have renounced the use of reason as to administer medication to the dead"
"The beauty of the second amendment is that it will not be needed until they try to take it."
"The loathsome combination of Church and State"
"War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses."
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to = remain silent."
"I am for freedom of religion and against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another"
"In every country and every age, the priest had been hostile to Liberty."
"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus by the Supreme Being in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter."
"Almighty God hath created the mind free"
"I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition (Christianity) one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology."
"I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend."
"No provision in our Constitution ought to be dearer to man than that which protects the rights of conscience against the enterprises of the civil authority.
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