Unitarians From The United States

"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."

"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 two major achievements of Jefferson's presidency were the Louisiana Purchase and the abolition of the slave trade."

"When Mr. Jefferson wrote that one of his associates in Washington's cabinet was "a fool and a blabber," his words, taken in their context, make exactly the same impression of calm, disinterested and objective appraisal as if he had remarked that the man had black hair and brown eyes."

"If Jefferson was wrong, America is wrong. If America is right, Jefferson was right."

"More than 20 years after CBS executives were pressured by Jefferson historians to drop plans for a mini-series on Jefferson and Hemings, the network airs Sally Hemings: An American Scandal. Though many quarreled with the portrayal of Hemings as unrealistically modern and heroic, no major historian challenged the series' premise that Hemings and Jefferson had a 38-year relationship that produced children."

"[S]he Hemings had children which resembled Mr. Jefferson so closely that it was plain that they had his blood in their veins ... He [Randolph] said in one instance, a gentleman dining with Mr. Jefferson, looked so startled as he raised his eyes from the latter to the servant behind him, that his discovery of the resemblance was perfectly obvious to all."

"If these people who call themselves liberals, thereby degrading a noble word, aren't really liberals, then what are they? ... They are glib—gliberals. ... The Stevensons, Kennedys and Humphreys are able to flit from one position to another without the modifying transitions, because they say it so pretty. Honeyed words, swiftly delivered like cats scurrying up a wet fence; liberally seasoned with anecdotes, catchy syntax, Biblical quotations, Shakespeare; writing techniques introduced by early political writers like Thomas Jefferson, the founding Gliberal, a slaveowner who insisted that the Bill of Rights be added to the Constitution."

"Thank Heaven, I have never hesitated to criticize Jefferson; he was infinitely below Hamilton. I think the worship of Jefferson a discredit to my country."

"Born in 1743, Thomas Jefferson- third President of the United States, author of the Declaration of Independence, governor of Virginia, and founder of the University of Virginia- voiced the aspirations of a new America as no other individual of his era. As public official, historian, philosopher, and plantation owner, he served his country for more than five decades. Jefferson designed and built his mountaintop home, Monticello (Italian for "little mountain") between 1768 and 1809. He saw to it that Monticello was unlike any other American house of his day. It is truly one of the nation's architectural masterpieces and is the only American home ever named to UNESCO's World Heritage List (along with such international treasures as the Taj Mahal, the pyramids of Egypt, Versailles, and the Great Wall of China). Monticello draws visitors from around the world. The neoclassical style is highlighted by the dramatic dome, which appears on the back of the U.S. nickel. A tour of the house and grounds reveals many unique facts about Jefferson and his house, and much state and American history."

"We deny, without regard to color, that 'all men are created equal'; it is not true now, and was not true when Jefferson wrote it."

"This very verse, brethren, having emanated from Mr. Jefferson, a much greater philosopher the world never afforded, has in truth injured us more, and has been as great a barrier to our emancipation as any thing that has ever been advanced against us. ... I pledge you my sacred word of honour, that Mr. Jefferson's remarks respecting us, have sunk deep into the hearts of millions of the whites, and never will be removed this side of eternity."

"They talk about Thomas Jefferson. ... A coward! A man who dared confess a disbelief in the divinity of Christ and be a candidate for the Presidency in the eighteenth century? A coward! The man who dared drag up by the roots primogeniture and entail against the opposition of all the old Virginia aristocracy in the Virginia House of Burgesses, against the protests of the Pendletons and the Randolphs and the Lees and the Washingtons and the Harrisons and I believe the Careys and nearly all the balance of them. A coward! The American President who threw down the gauntlet to Napoleon the Great and informed him of the fact that if the Mississippi River fell into the hands of France it would be a cause of unending conflict between the two nations. ... Oh, this hatred, this old federalistic relic of hatred of Thomas Jefferson would be pathetic if it was not amusing."

"Jefferson's objects have not fallen out of date. They are our own objects, if we be faithful to any ideals whatever; and the question we ask ourselves is not, How would Jefferson have pursued them in his day? but How shall we pursue them in ours? It is the spirit, not the tenets of the man by which he rules us from his urn."

"{{Cite Q | Q110933547"

"Thomas Jefferson, Political Writings ed by Joyce Appleby and Terence Ball. Cambridge University Press. 1999"

"Boyd, Julian P. et al, eds. The Papers of Thomas Jefferson. The definitive multivolume edition; available at major academic libraries. 31 volumes covers TJ to 1800, with 1801 due out in 2006. See description at"

"The Jefferson Cyclopedia (1900) large collection of TJ quotations arranged by 9000 topics; searchable; copyright has expired and it is online free."

"When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny."

"A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both, and deserve neither."

"I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology."

"Dispersed as the Jews are, they still form one nation, foreign to the land they live in."

"In matters of style, swim with the current: in matters of principle, stand like a rock."

"There is no justification for taking away individuals' freedom in the guise of public safety."

"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and the corporations which grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."

"My new trade of nail-making is to me in this country what an additional title of nobility or the ensigns of a new order are in Europe"

"Children till 10. years old to serve as nurses. from 10. to 16. the boys make nails, the girls spin. at 16. go into the ground or learn trades."

"I forgot to ask the favor of you to speak to Lilly as to the treatment of the nailers. it would destroy their value in my estimation to degrade them in their own eyes by the whip. this therefore must not be resorted to but in extremities. as they will again be under my government, I would chuse they should retain the stimulus of character."

"The habit of using ardent spirit, by men in public office, has occasioned more injury to the public service, and more trouble to me, than any other circumstance which has occurred in the internal concerns of the country, during my administration. And were I to commence my administration again, with the knowledge which from experience I have acquired, the first question which I would ask, with regard to every candidate for public office, should be, "Is he addicted to the use of ardent spirit?""

"I have always said, and always will say, that the studious perusal of the sacred volume will make better citizens, better fathers, and better husbands."

"I allow nothing for losses by death, but, on the contrary, shall presently take credit four per cent. per annum, for their increase over and above keeping up their own numbers."

"I am quite at a loss about the nailboys remaining with mr Stewart. they have long been a dead expence instead of profit to me. in truth they require a vigour of discipline to make them do reasonable work, to which he cannot bring himself. on the whole I think it will be best for them also to be removed to mr Lilly’s [control]."

"There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me."

"Botany is the school for patience, and it’s amateurs learn resignation from daily disappointments."

"The naturalists, you know, distribute the history of nature into three kingdoms or departments: zoology, botany, mineralogy. Ideology, or mind, however, occupies so much space in the field of science, that we might perhaps erect it into a fourth kingdom or department. But inasmuch as it makes a part of the animal construction only, it would be more proper to subdivide zoology into physical and moral."

"Put down all banks, admit none but a metallic circulation that will take its proper level with the like circulation in other countries, and then our manufacturers may work in fair competition with those of other countries, and the import duties which the government may lay for the purposes of revenue will so far place them above equal competition."

"Certainly no nation ever before abandoned to the avarice and jugglings of private individuals to regulate according to their own interests, the quantum of circulating medium for the nation — to inflate, by deluges of paper, the nominal prices of property, and then to buy up that property at 1s. in the pound, having first withdrawn the floating medium which might endanger a competition in purchase. Yet this is what has been done, and will be done, unless stayed by the protecting hand of the legislature. The evil has been produced by the error of their sanction of this ruinous machinery of banks; and justice, wisdom, duty, all require that they should interpose and arrest it before the schemes of plunder and spoliation desolate the country."

"There can be no safer deposit on earth than the Treasury of the United States."

"The greatest service which can be rendered any country is to add an useful plant to its culture; especially, a bread grain; next in value to bread is oil."

"A child raised every 2. years is of more profit then the crop of the best laboring man. in this, as in all other cases, providence has made our duties and our interests coincide perfectly.... [W]ith respect therefore to our women & their children I must pray you to inculcate upon the overseers that it is not their labor, but their increase which is the first consideration with us."

"I sincerely believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a money aristocracy that has set the government at defiance. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs."

"With the sure sagacity of a leader of men, Washington at once selected, for the highest and most responsible stations, the three chief Americans who represented the three forces in the nation which alone could command success in the institution of the government. Hamilton was the head, Jefferson was the heart, and John Jay was the conscience. Washington's just and serene ascendancy was the lambent flame in which these beneficent powers were fused, and nothing less than that ascendancy could have ridden the whirlwind and directed the storm that burst around him."

"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."

"Nothing was or is farther from my intentions, than to enlist myself as the champion of a fixed opinion, where I have only expressed doubt."

"I have often thought that nothing would do more extensive good at small expense than the establishment of a small circulating library in every county, to consist of a few well-chosen books, to be lent to the people of the country under regulations as would secure their safe return in due time."

"It has always been denied by the republican party in this country, that the Constitution had given the power of incorporation to Congress. On the establishment of the Bank of the United States, this was the great ground on which that establishment was combated; and the party prevailing supported it only on the argument of its being an incident to the power given them for raising money."

"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."

"The selfish spirit of commerce knows no country, and feels no passion or principle but that of gain."

"Knowing that religion does not furnish grosser bigots than law, I expect little from old judges."

"I thought Congress had taken their ground firmly for continuing their embargo till June, and then war. But a sudden and unaccountable revolution of opinion took place the last week, chiefly among the New England and New York members, and in a kind of panic they voted the 4th of March for removing the embargo, and by such a majority as gave all reason to believe they would not agree either to war or non-intercourse. This, too, was after we had become satisfied that the Essex Junto had found their expectation desperate, of inducing the people there either to separation or forcible opposition. The majority of Congress, however, has now rallied to the removing the embargo on the 4th March, non-intercourse with France and Great Britain, trade everywhere else, and continuing war preparations. The further details are not yet settled, but I believe it is perfectly certain that the embargo will be taken off the 4th of March."