Presidents Of The United States

"When I read Jefferson's disparagement of Wheatley, it felt like he had been disparaging the entire lineage of Black poets who would follow her, myself included, and I saw a man who had not had a clear understanding of what love is...Jefferson's conceptions of love seem to have been so distorted by his own prejudices that he was unable to recognize the endless examples of love that pervaded plantations across the country: mothers who huddled over their children and took the lash so their little ones wouldn't have to; surrogate mothers, fathers, and grandparents who took in children and raised them as their own when their biological parents were disappeared in the middle of the night; the people who loved and married and committed to one another despite the omnipresent threat that they might be separated at any moment. What is love if not this?"

"Bear, Jr., James A., ed. Jefferson's Memorandum Books, 2 vols. (1997). Jefferson's account books with records of daily expenses."

"All honor to Jefferson to the man, who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a mere revolutionary an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all time, and so to embalm it there to-day and in all coming days it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling block to the very harbingers of reappearing tyranny and oppression."

"Among the many legacies left by Thomas Jefferson, democracy may be the most lasting. Author of the Declaration of Independence, champion of the Bill of Rights, and a founder of the Democratic-Republican party, Jefferson has passed on to the American people his abiding faith in the ability of citizens to govern themselves. Of the assumptions that make American politics possible, none is more fundamental. Yet it must be said that the legacy left by this high-minded and idealistic philosopher, who was also a hard-headed and pragmatic politician—this egalitarian owner of slaves—is by no means simple. At the very least, as Charles Wiltse suggested almost half a century ago, Jefferson has left Americans with a divided conception of democracy. On the one hand, in advocating equality and popular sovereignty, he paved the way for a tradition of social democracy that extends from Albert Gallatin to Andrew Jackson to FDR and the progressive reformers of the twentieth century. On the other hand, as a believer in liberty and limited government, he can be seen as the source of a tradition of democratic individualism that runs from John Taylor to John C. Calhoun to contemporary conservatives who champion personal rights and advocate restrictions on the role of the state. "This double emphasis in Jefferson's thought," concludes Wiltse, "has left American democracy a dual tradition.""

"The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society. And yet they are denied and evaded, with no small show of success. One dashingly calls them ”glittering generalities.” Another bluntly calls them “self-evident lies.” And others insidiously argue that they apply to “superior races.” These expressions, different in form, are identical in object and effect – the supplanting the principles of free government, and restoring those of classification, caste and legitimacy. They would delight a convocation of crowned heads plotting against the people. They are the vanguard, the miner and sappers, of returning despotism. We must repulse them, or they will subjugate us."

"the great fathers Jefferson, Lincoln and Jackson had given way to Carnegie, Morgan and DuPont."

"when Thomas Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark to explore the Northwest, he hoped they’d find live mastodons roaming around. He really just couldn’t believe, even though he was very interested in fossils—he had a fossil room at the White House when he was there—he couldn’t believe these animals had gone extinct. It just wasn’t what happened. It wasn’t what the creator, you know, had planned for them."

"If we look at our history with honesty and clarity we will be forced to admit that our Federal form of government has been, from the day of its birth, weakened in its integrity, confused and confounded in its direction, by the unresolved race question. We seldom take note or give adequate significance to the fact that Thomas Jefferson’s text of the Declaration of Independence was revised by the Continental Congress to eliminate a justifiable attack on King George for encouraging slave trade...Jefferson knew that such compromises with principle struck at the heart of the nation’s security and integrity."

"Jefferson was exalted as the patron saint of all good things. The range of causes for which his name was invoked is staggering: democracy and partisanship, states' rights and nationalism, slavery and abolitionism, egalitarianism and racism, imperialism and isolationism, populism and laissez-faire capitalism, the planned and the decentralized society. In the nineteenth century, so long as rural values continued to prevail in America despite the relentless march of industrialization, Jefferson continued to be identified with the agrarian tradition; in the twentieth, when the center of American life and values became the city, his connection with that ideal was all but forgotten, and instead he came to be regarded as the champion of the "have-nots" against the "haves," of the "common man" (or the "forgotten man" or the "little fellow") against aristocrats and plutocrats... The real Jefferson...was lost in the shuffle. So, too, was the America he wanted his country to become; and in a nation of crime-ridden cities and poisoned air, of credit cards and gigantic corporations, of welfare rolls and massive bureaucracies, corruption and alienation, that loss is the more poignant. He and his followers set out to deflect the course of History, and History ended up devouring them and turning even their memory to its own purposes. History has a way of doing that."

"Jefferson hosted the United States' first iftar at the White House. It was an unintentional event, one that occurred as a result of Jefferson's scheduled meeting with an invited envoy from the Tunisian government. It was the end of the first Barbary War, and Jefferson was anxious to establish better diplomatic relations with the North African states while ensuring the security of American interests in the Mediterranean. Upon being informed of the envoy's fasting to observe the Islamic month of Ramadan, Jefferson had the mealtime at the White House changed from 3:30 in the afternoon to "precisely at sunset" in an effort to accommodate his guest. This gesture on behalf of the president was not simply a diplomatic one, but one that demonstrated Jefferson's familiarity and comfort with Islam, a faith that interested him since his time as a student at the College of William & Mary. Indeed, Jefferson's interest in the Qur'an and his own study of Arabic led to his active promotion and eventual creation of an Oriental Languages department at his alma mater. As a scholar and a diplomat, Jefferson was keenly aware and interested in the world outside of America and the importance of cultural and intellectual capital to the success of the United States."

"I have long believed, that it was only by preserving the identity of the Republican party as embodied and characterized by the principles introduced by Mr. Jefferson that the original rights of the states and the people could be maintained as contemplated by the Constitution."

"I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone."

"Consider this simple syllogism: Slavery is bad; Thomas Jefferson owned slaves; so, Thomas Jefferson was bad. Consider this simplistic precept: Racism is bad. Both are anything but profound and certainly not illuminating, but they typify, with due consideration for hyperbole, the quality and blinkered approach to Jeffersonian scholarship in the past several decades. The focal issue has been Jefferson’s racism, and the issue within the issue has been his assumed relationship with Sally Hemings. Jeffersonian scholarship has become an exercise in battology — a useless, fatuous repetition of the same claims but with a slightly different twist. "Jefferson was a racist but he really loved Sally Hemings" versus "Jefferson was a racist and he raped Sally Hemings," and so on. Those twists are what merit publication. The collision of radically different, but historically reasonable, ideas, needed for advances in historical scholarship, has become anathema. ... The situation at Monticello is toxic. They are unwilling to aim to settle the issues of Jefferson’s paternity and of his avowed racism by rational debate concerning the evidence, or even concerning what ought to count as evidence. Members of TJF — and many of them are, I suspect, sufficiently unfamiliar with Jefferson to be judges of the issue of paternity — have elected themselves to be the sole arbiters of Thomas Jefferson’s legacy, which is no longer open to debate. ... TJF’s depiction of Jefferson, jaded as it is, has won the day. It is now no longer necessary to recognize others who disagree with TJF, to read their arguments, to assess critically those arguments, and to engage in debate with them. ... While it is laudable that members of the TJF wish to be viewed historically as paladins of human rights, they are doing so by constructing an image of Jefferson that is warped by political ideals. Their Jefferson is an opportunist, hypocrite, racist, and perhaps even rapist, and they do not give voice to scholars who disagree. The climate is authoritarian — certainly not in keeping with Jefferson’s republican thinking."

"Then there's the odd, of course, fact that he had a very long love affair with a woman who he owned, who he inherited from his father-in-law, who was his wife's half-sister, and produced several children by her, whose descendants have mainly been brought up on the white side of the color line. So in a strange way, his own patrimony disproves his own belief that there couldn't be coexistence between black and white Americans."

"True," replied M. de —, "he considers a free press as the paladium of liberty. I went today an hour before his time of dining, and was received in his cabinet while he was finishing a letter; I took up one of your public journals which lay upon his table, and was astonished and shocked to find its columns filled with the lowest abuse, and vilest of calumnies of the President. I threw it down with indignation, exclaiming, why do you not have the fellow hung who dares to write these abominable lies! He smiled at my warmth, and replied, 'hang the guardian of public morals? no, sir; rather would I protect the spirit of freedom which dictates even that abuse. Put that paper into your pocket, my good friend, and when you hear any one doubt the reality of American liberty, show them that paper, and tell them where you found it; you cannot have a better proof of its existence. Sir, the country where public men are amenable to public opinion; where not only their official measures, but their private morals, are open to the scrutiny and animadversion of every citizen, is more secure from despotism and corruption, than it could be rendered by the wisest code of laws, or best formed constitution. Party spirit may sometimes blacken, and its erroneous opinions may sometimes injure; but, in general, it will prove the best guardian of a pure and wise administration; it will detect and expose vice and corruption, check the encroachments of power, and resist oppression; sir, it is an abler protector of the people's rights, than arms or laws.' 'But is it not shocking that virtuous characters should be defamed?' 'Let their actions refute such libels. Believe me, virtue is not long darkened by the clouds of calumny. In its course, it will shine forth like the sun at noon-day, and with its brightness disperse the fogs and vapours which obscured its rising light. When a man assumes a public trust, he should consider himself as public property, and justly liable to the inspection and vigilance of public opinion; and the more sensibly he is made to feel his dependence, the less danger will there be of his abuse of power — The abuse of power, that rock on which good governments, and the people's rights, have been so often wrecked.' 'Such doctrines would never be recognised in the old world,' I observed. 'Our example,' he replied, 'may enforce these doctrines, which your philosophers have so long preached in vain; example, you know, far outweighs precept.'"

"Directly or indirectly American classicism traces its ancestry to Jefferson, who may truly be called the father of our national architecture."

"It may, on the whole, be truly said of him, that he was greatly eminent for the comprehensiveness and fertility of his genius, for the vast extent and rich variety of his acquirements, and particularly distinguished by the philosophic impress left on every subject which he touched. Nor was he less distinguished for an early and uniform devotion to the cause of liberty, and systematic preference of a form of Government squared in the strictest degree to the rights of man. In the social and domestic spheres, he was a model of the virtues and manners which most adorn them."

"Truly, I believe we need a new Declaration of Independence. Is there no modern Jefferson or Adams?"

"Jefferson, moved by anger and scorn against the planter class for its fellowship and partnership in the tyranny of the Crown, threw off its allurements, so congenial to his tastes and habits, and allied himself absolutely, unreservedly, actively, permanently with the wronged masses. In the struggle in that agricultural community between the "planters," or large landowners, and the "settlers," or small landowners, Jefferson's heart was always with the latter."

"Jefferson saw in the widespread ownership of land, in families made self-sufficient and independent by their farming, the best defence that could be erected against the arrogation of additional powers by the State, or by any who might wish to construct an economic or political oligarchy. Men, he frequently said, had not sought freedom in order to acquire property, but, rather, had acquired property in order to ensure freedom... Jefferson's analysis of democracy is one that still possesses a certain relevance. In so far as he believed that even the democratic State could become an elective tyranny, he spoke prophetically. In so far as he believed that property provided the best defence against that tyranny, he reminds us all of the importance of property, and of the dangers to democracy that result from its abolition."

"Jefferson's invention of the Wheel Cypher represents a contribution to cryptographic science so far in advance of his time that at least a century had to elapse before a similar invention was independently made by a second inventor in the field."

"The story of black Sal is no farce—That he cohabits with her and has a number of children by her is a sacred truth—and the worst of it is he keeps the same children slaves—an unnatural crime which is very common in these parts."

"His anti-slavery sentiments, so forcibly given in his Notes on Virginia, will be quoted with impressive effect as long as slavery exists in our land. It is true, he was a slaveholder; and hence his theory was better than his practice. It is apparent, moreover, that he had clearer views of the impolicy of the slave-system, than of its guilt. But he never dishonored his judgement, or perverted his good sense, by attempting to prove the lawfulness of holding the colored race in bondage."

"Jefferson himself considered the people he enslaved in the coldest economic terms, saying he calculated that a “woman who brings a child every two years as more profitable than the best man of the farm. What she produces is an addition to capital, while his labors disappear in mere consumption.""

"Cappon, Lester J., ed. The Adams-Jefferson Letters (1959)"

"Good wine is a necessity of life for me."

"Upstanding citizens openly used drugs to feel nice, to alter their consciousness. Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, was a long-term, avid drug user. He particularly appreciated the opium-based drugs for their mind-altering as well as medicinal effects."

"In 1801, President Jefferson aptly described the new settler-state's intentions for horizontal and vertical continental expansion, stating: "However our present interests may restrain us within our own limits, it is impossible not to look forward to distant times, when our rapid multiplication will expand itself beyond those limits and cover the whole northern, if not the southern continent, with a people speaking the same language, governed in similar form by similar laws." This vision of manifest destiny found form a few years later in the Monroe Doctrine, signaling the intention of annexing or dominating former Spanish colonial territories in the Americas and the Pacific, which would be put into practice during the rest of the century."

"Who was it wrote that – “all men created equal”? It was Jefferson. Jefferson had more slaves than anybody else."

"Some have made the love of God the foundation of morality. This, too, is but a branch of our moral duties, which are generally divided into duties to God and duties to man. If we did a good act merely from the love of God and a belief that it is pleasing to Him, whence arises the morality of the Atheist? It is idle to say, as some do, that no such being exists. We have the same evidence of the fact as of most of those we act on, to-wit: their own affirmations, and their reasonings in support of them. I have observed, indeed, generally, that while in protestant countries the defections from the Platonic Christianity of the priests is to Deism, in catholic countries they are to Atheism. Diderot, D'Alembert, D'Holbach, Condorcet, are known to have been among the most virtuous of men. Their virtue, then, must have had some other foundation than the love of God."

"Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains. In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own. It is easier to acquire them, and to effect this, they have perverted the best religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind, and therefore the safer engine for their purposes. With the lawyers it is a new thing. They have, in the mother country, been generally the primest supporters of the free principles of their constitution. But there, too, they have changed."

"Self-interest, or rather self-love, or egoism, has been more plausibly substituted as the basis of morality. But I consider our relations with others as constituting the boundaries of morality. With ourselves, we stand on the ground of identity, not of relation, which last, requiring two subjects, excludes self-love confined to a single one. To ourselves, in strict language, we can owe no duties, obligation requiring also two parties. Self-love, therefore, is no part of morality. Indeed, it is exactly its counterpart."

"The whole history of these books is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills."

"We might as well say that the Newtonian system of philosophy is a part of the common law, as that the Christian religion is. The truth is that Christianity and Newtonianism being reason and verity itself, in the opinion of all but infidels and Cartesians, they are protected under the wings of the common law from the dominion of other sects, but not erected into dominion over them."

"The Christian priesthood, finding the doctrines of Christ levelled to every understanding, and too plain to need explanation, saw in the mysticism of Plato, materials with which they might build up an artificial system, which might, from its indistinctness, admit everlasting controversy, give employment for their order, and introduce it to profit, power and pre-eminence. The doctrines which flowed from the lips of Jesus himself are within the comprehension of a child ; but thousands of volumes have not yet explained the Platonisms engrafted on them; and for this obvious reason, that nonsense can never be explained."

"Religion is a subject on which I have ever been most scrupulously reserved. I have considered it as a matter between every man and his Maker in which no other, and far less the public, had a right to intermeddle."

"History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes."

"I deplore with you the putrid state into which our newspapers have passed, and the malignity, the vulgarity, & mendacious spirit of those who write for them: and I enclose you a recent sample, the production of a New England judge, as a proof of the abyss of degradation into which we are fallen. These ordures are rapidly depraving the public taste and lessening its relish for sound food. As vehicles of information and a curb on our functionaries, they have rendered themselves useless by forfeiting all title to belief. That this has in a great degree been produced by the violence and malignity of party spirit I agree with you..."

"A man has a right to use a saw, an axe, a plane, separately; may he not combine their uses on the same piece of wood? He has a right to use his knife to cut his meat, a fork to hold it; may a patentee take from him the right to combine their use on the same subject? Such a law, instead of enlarging our conveniences, as was intended, would most fearfully abridge them, and crowd us by monopolies out of the use of the things we have."

"I like well your idea of issuing treasury notes bearing interest, because I am persuaded they would soon be withdrawn from circulation and locked up in vaults & private hoards. It would put it in the power of every man to lend his 100. or 1000 d. tho’ not able to go forward on the great scale, and be the most advantageous way of obtaining a loan. The other idea of creating a National bank, I do not concur in, because it seems now decided that Congress has not that power, (altho’ I sincerely wish they had it exclusively) and because I think there is already a vast redundancy, rather than a scarcity of paper medium."

"[...] Congress itself can punish Alexandria, by repealing the law which made it a town, by discontinuing it as a port of entry or clearance, and perhaps by suppressing it’s banks. But I expect all will go off with impunity. If our government ever fails, it will be from this weakness. No government can be maintained without the principle of fear as well as of duty. Good men will obey the last, but bad ones the former only."

"He who steadily observes the moral precepts in which all religions concur, will never be questioned at the gates of heaven as to the dogmas in which they all differ."

"I now return you the memoir ... I am much gratified by its communication, because, as the plan appeared in the newspapers soon after the new Secretary of War came into office, we had given him the credit of it. Every line of it is replete with wisdom; and we might lament that our tardy enlistments prevented its execution, were we not to reflect that these proceeded from the happiness of our people at home. It is more a subject of joy that we have so few of the desperate characters which compose modern regular armies. But it proves more forcibly the necessity of obliging every citizen to be a soldier; this was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free State. Where there is no oppression there will be no pauper hirelings. We must train and classify the whole of our male citizens, and make military instruction a regular part of collegiate education. We can never be safe till this is done."

"Of all the systems of morality, ancient or modern, which have come under my observation, none appear to me so pure as that of Jesus. He who follows this steadily need not, I think, be uneasy, although he cannot comprehend the subtleties and mysteries erected on his doctrines by those who, calling themselves his special followers and favorites, would make him come into the world to lay snares for all understandings but theirs. These metaphysical heads, usurping the judgment seat of God, denounce as his enemies all who cannot perceive the Geometrical logic of Euclid in the demonstrations of St. Athanasius, that three are one, and one is three; and yet that the one is not three nor the three one."

"But though an old man, I am but a young gardener."

"Politics, like religion, hold up the torches of martyrdom to the reformers of error."

"The acquisition of Canada this year, as far as the neighborhood of Quebec, will be a mere matter of marching, and will give us experience for the attack of Halifax the next, and the final expulsion of England from the American continent."

"I agree with you that there is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents... The natural aristocracy I consider as the most precious gift of nature, for the instruction, the trusts, and government of society... Every one, by his property, or by his satisfactory situation, is interested in the support of law and order. And such men may safely and advantageously reserve to themselves a wholesome control over their public affairs, and a degree of freedom, which, in the hands of the canaille [the masses] of the cities of Europe, would be instantly perverted to the demolition and destruction of everything public and private."

"That we are overdone with banking institutions which have banished the precious metals and substituted a more fluctuating and unsafe medium, that these have withdrawn capital from useful improvements and employments to nourish idleness, that the wars of the world have swollen our commerce beyond the wholesome limits of exchanging our own productions for our own wants, and that, for the emolument of a small proportion of our society who prefer these demoralizing pursuits to labors useful to the whole, the peace of the whole is endangered and all our present difficulties produced, are evils more easily to be deplored than remedied."

"In a democratic republic, where the mass of the people of all parties have the same interest at stake, some respect must be had to the feelings and wishes of the minority, especially when that minority is large and clamorous; otherwise, it will be impossible to avoid discord, and discord weakens the bonds of union."