Top 100 Quotes About Jefferson
#1. Jefferson was the rare leader who stood out from the crowd without intimidating it.
Jon Meacham
#2. Thomas Jefferson spoke of certain truths as self-evident. He did not say that these truths were self-explanatory or that they were self-operating.
J. Martin Klotsche
#3. 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
Jon Meacham
#4. To say that we have to surrender to judicial supremacy is to do what Jefferson warned against, which is, in essence, surrender to judicial tyranny.
Mike Huckabee
#5. I liked blues from the time my mother used to take me to church. I started to listen to gospel music, so I liked that. But I had an aunt at that time, my mother's aunt who bought records by people like Lonnie Johnson, Robert Johnson, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and a few others.
B.B. King
#6. Jefferson attributes to a college professor and mentor his lifelong habit of questioning conventional wisdom.
John Ferling
#7. I agree with Thomas Jefferson, who once wrote that he would support the death penalty only when the infallibility of human judgment had been demonstrated.
Paul Jacob
#8. Probably the greatest concentration of talent and genius in this house except for perhaps those times when Thomas Jefferson ate alone.
John F. Kennedy
#9. Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.
H. Jackson Brown Jr.
#10. Jefferson's extraordinary efforts to defend the rights of neutrals to trade freely drove the country into a deep depression and severely damaged his presidency. He ended up violating much of what he and his party stood for.
Gordon S. Wood
#11. Plenty of gun opponents have pointed out the obvious: that the Founding Fathers could never have envisioned the kinds of 'arms' that exist today - Washington, Jefferson, and the rest had never even seen a bullet. Musket balls for guns that required constant reloading were the 'arms' of the day.
Kurt Eichenwald
#12. What's important is that you can be a wife and mother or you can be a devoted daughter all your life. You can't be both. Not when Thomas Jefferson is your father. You have to choose, Patsy. His
Stephanie Dray
#13. It is false to suggest that Thomas Jefferson or any other Founding Father believed in a legal barrier to God in the public square.
Newt Gingrich
#14. Jefferson the deist was accused of being an atheist and even a Muslim.
Karen Armstrong
#15. But if there's an erosion at home, you know, Thomas Jefferson warned about a tyranny of an oligarchy and if we surrender our democracy to the tyranny of an oligarchy, we've made a terrible mistake.
Pat Robertson
#16. It was Jefferson's genius that kept the American Revolution from being sucked into the tunnel faster than it was. Jefferson had red hair. Nothing is implied here.
Tom Robbins
#17. We stand in the shadow of Jefferson who believed that a society founded upon the rule of law and liberty was dependent upon public education and the diffusion of knowledge.
Matt Blunt
#18. People like Jefferson, Lincoln, Susan B. Anthony and M. L. K. are larger than life to me. I find myself staring at photographs of Lincoln almost in disbelief that he was a man who walked the earth and not merely some fiction writer's creation.
Henry Rollins
#19. I think it's God that makes people care for people, Jefferson. I think it's God makes children play and people sing. I believe it's God that brings loved ones together. I believe it's God that makes trees bud and food grow out of the earth.
Ernest J. Gaines
#20. Most Americans are unaware that Thomas Jefferson was the first American president to go to war against radical Islam. Jefferson was very concerned with Islam's war-like doctrine and its inability to separate mosque and state.
Brad Thor
#21. The most revered presidents - Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Wilson, both Roosevelts, Truman, Kennedy, Reagan, Clinton, Obama - have each advanced populist imperialism while gradually increasing inclusion of other groups beyond the core of descendants of old settlers into the ruling mythology.
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
#22. I'd been a housewife and mother to our son Thomas Jefferson, and I was looking for a new career. So when my agent called and said a producer named Paul Elliott from E&B productions, the biggest panto company in the country at the time, wanted to meet me I agreed.
Britt Ekland
#23. We know Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin as politicians, but they felt that science was something everyone should have a knowledge of.
Rush D. Holt Jr.
#24. If Thomas Jefferson had heard us, he probably would have said, 'We shouldn't have free speech.'
Robin Quivers
#25. Jefferson thought schools would produce free men: we prove him right by putting dropouts in jail.
Benjamin Barber
#26. It is easily and often overlooked that when Thomas Jefferson asserted that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness were inalienable human rights, he did so on the ground that they had been endowed by God, our Creator.
Tom Stoppard
#27. Why should the Eisenhower memorial be over twice the size of WWII Memorial? Why should it be so vast as to comfortably house two Lincoln Memorials, two Washington Monuments, and two Jefferson Memorials - all six at once?
Leon Krier
#28. The Declaration of Independence I always considered as a theatrical show. Jefferson ran away with all the stage effect of that ... and all the glory of it.
John Adams
#29. That was back when all of us were students at Jefferson Elementary, and our quirks and strange rough edges hadn't fully formed yet
Jennifer Mathieu
#30. Washington, not Jefferson, freed his slaves upon his death.
Stephen Ambrose
#31. As Thomas Jefferson proclaimed, "In matters of fashion, swim with the current. In matters of conscience, stand like a rock.
John C. Maxwell
#32. It was of course Jefferson's gift at one time or another to put with eloquence the "right" answer to every moral question. In practice, however, he seldom deviated from an opportunistic course, calculated to bring him power.
Gore Vidal
#33. Can a free government possibly exist with the Roman Catholic religion?
{Letter to Thomas Jefferson, May 19, 1821}
John Adams
#34. When I was growing up, we learned our history almost as lives of the saints. And it came as a shock, "Oh, Jefferson had slaves?" It always comes as a shock to us that elevation to the White House didn't somehow cleanse them of all their deep character flaws.
Harry Shearer
#35. (Jefferson's personal distaste for slavery must be put alongside the fact that he owned hundreds of slaves to the day he died).
Howard Zinn
#36. How I longed to see these things; how I longed to see the Liberty Bell and walk on the streets where Thomas Jefferson, Tom Paine and Benjamin Franklin had walked.
Burl Ives
#37. There is an elegant memorial in Washington to Jefferson, but none to Hamilton. However, if you seek Hamilton's monument, look around. You are living in it. We honor Jefferson, but live in Hamilton's country, a mighty industrial nation with a strong central government.
George F. Will
#38. I realized my predicament early in my First Year. We don't say "Freshman" or "Senior" etc. at UVA because Mr. Jefferson felt that education is a lifelong process
Tina Fey
#39. The most expensive bottle of wine ever sold - a 1787 Chateau Lafite Bordeaux, supposedly once the property of Thomas Jefferson ... It was sold at Christie's in London in 1985 for $156,000.00. Like a lot of high-priced art, the bottle is essentially undrinkable.
Robert Genn
#40. By reaching for the stars, Jefferson gave us all the impulse. He
David McCullough
#41. From the 12th Congressional District Hopeful William Jefferson Clinton during the Nixon investigations.
I wanted to share some information I've turned up regarding two of your Clinton quotes.
Keith Richards
#42. Well," I say, "we're practically there."
"Where?" says Jefferson.
"The future.
Chris Weitz
#43. Jefferson writes dismissively of slaves that "their griefs are transient." American white supremacists to this day maintain that blacks are "mud people" because their lack of conscience prevents them from blushing - they are not capable of summoning "blood in the face," as the
Christopher Hitchens
#44. The heirs of Jefferson and Madison would be the Democratic-Republicans, the heirs of Hamilton and Adams would be the Federalists. But the heirs of Washington would be all Americans.
John P. Avlon
#45. Thomas Jefferson declared, stating that he was speaking on behalf of the other founding fathers, ... (that) we should build a wall between the church and state.
Jimmy Carter
#46. So now it turns out that Thomas Jefferson was having sex with Sally Hemings while serving in the 101st Airborne during the Vietnam War.
Ann Coulter
#47. The platform we had in Dallas, the 1984 Republican platform, all the ideas we supported there - from tax policy, to foreign policy; from individual rights, to neighborhood security - are things that Jefferson Davis and his people believed in.
Trent Lott
#48. The denial of the popular will, Jefferson said privately, "opens upon us an abyss at which every sincere patriot must shudder."15
Jon Meacham
#49. The priests of the different religious sects . . . dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight, and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subdivision of the duperies on which they live. - THOMAS JEFFERSON
Richard Dawkins
#50. A declaration of the independence of America, and the sovereignty of the United States was drawn by the ingenious and philosophic pen of Thomas Jefferson, Esquire, a delegate from the state of Virginia.
Mercy Otis Warren
#52. The spirit of independence! Every man who bore arms in this revolution now considers himself on the same footing as his neighbor. I tell you, Jefferson, the spirit of independence has been converted to the abominable idea of equality.
Stephanie Dray
#53. I had done a lot of rock 'n' roll photography when I was in college. I was one of many photographers who worked for The Doors, Jefferson Airplane, and all of these rock 'n' roll bands.
John Dykstra
#54. Jefferson could strike up the band even when he was being lazy or fearful.
Richard Brookhiser
#55. The age of Lincoln and Jefferson memorials is over. It will be presidential libraries from now on.
Ada Louise Huxtable
#56. Well, you know, Thomas Jefferson, who was the author of the Declaration of Independence said he wouldn't have any atheists in his cabinet because atheists wouldn't swear an oath to God. That was Jefferson and we have never had any Muslims in the cabinet.
Pat Robertson
#57. We had so many different presidents, including Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln - there were other founders like Hamilton, Adams - who made it very clear that the courts can't make a law. The Constitution is expressly clear that that's a power reserved to Congress.
Mike Huckabee
#58. In America everybody is of the opinion that he has no social superiors, since all men are equal, but he does not admit that he has no social inferiors, for, from the time of Jefferson onward, the doctrine that all men are equal applies only upwards, not downwards.
Bertrand Russell
#59. Jefferson was among the greatest men who had ever lived, a Renaissance figure who was formidable without seeming overbearing, sparkling without being showy, winning without appearing cloying.
Jon Meacham
#60. The evolution of national unity and equal rights is all about what America represents as a nation today: a manifestation of the historical episodes of Jefferson and Henry as well as the Civil War, the Women's Suffrage movement, and the Civil Rights struggles.
Patrick Mendis
#61. I've known white Australian girls from wealthy families who were sent to posh private schools, who knew all of that stuff, and I think would recognise much in Jefferson's book. What I related to most strongly was the sexism and misogyny Margo Jefferson had to battle.
Justine Larbalestier
#62. These books sank without a trace, or faded fast, because they tell the sort of truths that Madison and Jefferson believed our Constitution should protect - truths that the people have the right to know, and needs to know, about our government and other powers that keep us in the dark.
Christopher Simpson
#63. I'm fonder of you than anybody on earth. I couldn't tell you that in New York. It'd mean I was a faggot. That was what the Civil War was about. Abraham Lincoln was a faggot. He was in love with General Grant. So was Jefferson Davis. Lincoln just freed the slaves on a bet.
Ernest Hemingway,
#65. Few American presidents are held in higher esteem than Thomas Jefferson. Though historians have scrutinized every phase of his long public career and found him wanting in a number of respects, he holds an unshakable place in the pantheon of American heroes.
Robert Dallek
#66. Individual freedom and individual equality cannot co-exist. I dare say no one since Thomas Jefferson has really believed it.
Katharine Fullerton Gerould
#67. A modern-day conservator of Monticello says that Woodmont Jefferson as an amateur architect rather than a professional was that he made things more complicated than they needed to be for any practical purpose.
Bill Bryson
#68. 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.
Jon Meacham
#69. Sir, when the love of peace degenerates into fear of war, it becomes of all passions the most despicable." - Senator Giles of Virginia, to President Thomas Jefferson, before the War of 1812
Joe Buff
#70. CBGB represents a lot to New York City and to underground rock and to new wave and post-punk and whatever. But, you know, it's like tearing down the Jefferson Memorial or something.
Dave Grohl
#71. Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt faced adversities that, in their times, seemed impregnable. Great presidents overcome great odds.
Ron Fournier
#72. And why should we, of all people, expect the proud new developing nations to see the world precisely as we see it? Was any new nation ever more outspoken, independent and unaligned than the young America of Jefferson, Jackson, and Lincoln?
Chester Bowles
#73. After I outlined 'Catering to Nobody,' I went and worked for a caterer. And the other thing I had to do was to talk to the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department about how they investigated a crime.
Diane Mott Davidson
#74. 173 despots would surely be as oppressive as one," wrote Jefferson in 1785 in his Notes on the State of Virginia. "An elective despotism was not the government we fought for."31
Gordon S. Wood
#75. Unlike Jefferson, Hamilton never saw the creation of America as a magical leap across a chasm to an entirely new landscape, and he always thought the New World had much to learn from the Old. Probably
Ron Chernow
#76. Look at Thomas Jefferson. The guy had illegitimate kids in the 1700s, and they caught him last year. If you cheat on your wife and cover it up for 200 years, you're pretty much thinking you're home free.
Greg Giraldo
#77. Was the government to prescribe us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are now. - Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
#78. After the Great Depression and after public urging, a nationwide public competition was held to determine a design for a memorial that would honor President Thomas Jefferson's bold vision for westward expansion for America.
Russ Carnahan
#79. The political nature of man made it highly unlikely that a society designed to meet regularly would remain peaceable. "The way to make friends quarrel is to pit them in disputation under the public eye," Jefferson said.
Jon Meacham
#80. A man liberated from monarchical or hereditary limitations stood a greater chance of possessing a mind free to roam and to grow and to create and to innovate in a climate in which citizens lived together in essential harmony and affection.87 This was Jefferson's ideal republic - and he was
Jon Meacham
#81. I see dead Presidents. Lincoln, Jefferson, Franklin, and Washington.
Nicole Fende
#82. Political war was to be the rule, not the exception, in American life. "The country is so totally given up to the spirit of party, that not to follow blindfold the one or the other is an inexpiable offense," Adams wrote during Jefferson's first term.12
Jon Meacham
#83. If you read our Founding Fathers, people like Benjamin Franklin and Jefferson - what we're doing now in this country is making them roll over in their graves.
Rick Santelli
#84. The myth that John Locke was the philosopher behind the American Republic, is easily refuted by examining how Locke's philosophy steered Thomas Jefferson, for example.
Robert Trout
#85. Who would think it possible to redirect historical scholarship by explaining what Thomas Jefferson said in the Declaration of Independence?
Edmund Morgan
#86. And that's all we are Jefferson, all of us on this earth, a piece of drifting wood. until we - each of us, individually- decide to become something else. I am still that piece of drifting wood, and those out there are no better. But you can be better.
Ernest Gaines
#87. As was said by Thomas Jefferson, "the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
William R. Forstchen
#88. To walk into the Jefferson memorial is to be in a temple of the pure idolatry of reason
Scot McKnight
#89. The Virginia Statue for Religious Freedom ranked for Jefferson as one of the three achievements worthy of gracing his tombstone (the Declaration of Independence and the University of Virginia were the other two).
Matthew Stewart
#90. Adams lay peacefully, his mind clear, by all signs. Then late in the afternoon, according to several who were present in the room, he stirred and whispered clearly enough to be understood, Thomas Jefferson survives.
David McCullough
#91. Some talked,some wrote, and some fought to promote and establish it, but you, Mr. Adams and Mr. Jefferson thought for us all
Benjamin Rush
#92. For thirty-six of the forty years between 1800 and 1840, either Jefferson or a self-described adherent of his served as president of the United States: James Madison, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, and Martin Van Buren.32 (John Quincy Adams, a one-term president, was the single exception.)
Jon Meacham
#93. The best political figures create the impression that they find everyone they encounter to be what Abigail Adams said Jefferson was: one of the choice ones of the earth.
Jon Meacham
#94. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and John Marshall, all big men, and strong in every sense, deferred to him.
Mark David Ledbetter
#95. The moment illuminates the political Jefferson - a man who got his way quietly but unmistakably, without bluster or bombast, his words congenial but his will unwavering.
Jon Meacham
#96. Before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, we were here. Before the pen of Jefferson etched across the pages of history the majestic words of the Declaration of Independence, we were here.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#97. Finally, at one p.m. on Tuesday, February 17, 180161, on the thirty-sixth ballot, Jefferson prevailed. R
Jon Meacham
#98. When a bill was put before the state legislature in Jefferson City that would have prohibited anyone who owned a saloon from holding elective office and reporters asked what he thought of it, Alderman Jim said probably the bill was intended as a way of improving the reputation of saloonkeepers.
David McCullough
#99. Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed. which give happiness. Thomas Jefferson We never enjoy perfect happiness; our most fortunate successes are mingled with sadness; some anxieties always perplex the reality of our satisfaction.
William James
#100. Jihad - God's lawful war against nonbelievers. To drive the point home, the ambassador left Jefferson and Adams with a final image of what American sailors would face on the high
Glenn Beck
