"One war, such as that of our Revolution, is enough for one life."
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Quote collection
Thomas Jefferson quotes (page 72 of 91)
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"We love and we value peace; we know its blessings from experience. We abhor the follies of war, and are not untried in its distresses and calamities."
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"I do not believe war the most certain means of enforcing principles. Those peaceable coercions which are in the power of every nation, if undertaken in concert and in time of peace, are more likely to produce the desired effect."
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"I value peace, and I should unwillingly see any event take place which would render war a necessary resource."
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"War has been avoided from a due sense of the miseries, and the demoralization it produces, and of the superior blessings of a state of peace and friendship with all mankind."
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"I love peace, and am anxious that we should give the world still another useful lesson, by showing to them other modes of punishing injuries than by war, which is as much a punishment to the punisher as to the sufferer."
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"No man has done everything he can who has done only his best."
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"...is the spirit of the people an infallible, a permanent reliance? ...the spirit of the times may alter, will alter. Our rulers will become corrupt, our people careless."
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"It is as useless to argue with those who have renounced the use of reason as to administer medication to the dead."
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"I have indeed two great measures at heart, without which no republic can maintain itself in strength: 1. That of general education, to enable every man to judge for himself what will secure or endanger his freedom. 2. To divide every county into hundreds, of such size that all the children of each will be within reach of a central school in it."
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"Those who bear equally the burthens of Government should equally participate of its benefits."
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"It would not be for the public good to have [a majority in Congress of one party] greater [than] two to one."
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"It is an encouraging observation that no good measure was ever proposed which, if duly pursued, failed to prevail in the end."
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"It is not too soon to provide by every possible means that as few as possible shall be without a little portion of land. The small landholders are the most precious part of a state."
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"No instance exists of a person's writing two language perfectly. That will always appear to be his native language which was most familiar to him in his youth."
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"... I am not afraid of priests. They have tried upon me all their various batteries of pious whining, hypocritical canting, lying and slandering. I have contemplated their order from the Magi of the East to the Saints of the West and I have found no difference of character, but of more or less caution, in proportion to their information or ignorance on whom their interested duperies were to be played off. Their sway in New England is indeed formidable. No mind beyond mediocrity dares there to develop itself."
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"Everyone has a natural right to choose that vocation in life which he thinks most likely gives him comfortable subsistence."
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"No man will ever bring out of the Presidency the reputation which carries him into it. To myself, personally, it brings nothing but increasing drudgery and daily loss of friends."
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"Should [reformers] attempt more than the established habits of the people are ripe for, they may lose all and retard indefinitely the ultimate object of their aim."
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"The purpose of establishing different houses of legislation is to introduce the influence of different interests or different principles."
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