Thomas Jefferson Quotes
It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others; or as their case, by change of circumstances, become his own …give no example of concession betraying the common right of independent opinion.
Thomas Jefferson, 1743-1826, 3rd President of the United States (Democratic Republican, VA), Letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush, April 21, 1803
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Note the absolutism of the word unbounded.
Said, one of the leading American academic intellectuals and an Arab, was together with many other Muslim intellectuals, anguished at the lack of basic intellectual freedom in most Muslim nations and all Arab countries. The only Middle Eastern country in which Arabs had freedoms of expression political and otherwise was at the time, ironically Israel.
Spinoza’s ideas were considered so radical and dangerous that he was the only man in history who was excommunicated by the Catholics, the Jews and the Muslims.
Part of a larger quote about scientific freedom: see related quote.
This quotation was used ten years later by Virginia which, in convention, passed a resolution objecting to the Alien & Sedition Acts. The drafter of the original resolution was James Madison.
Both the United States and Canada had laws regulating the sexual behavior of citizens in the privacy of their own homes. It was not just homosexuality that the state attempted to control. Even the specific positions and methods of heterosexual intercourse were controlled by some states. Oral sex, certain positions of intercourse and other “details” could put a person in jail. Canada, a parliamentary nation, changed this by legislation. In the United States, it was the Supreme Court decisions protecting privacy that invalidated these old sexual role restrictions and prescriptions. For example, just 4 years before this quotation was made, 1963, the state of Connecticut was ordered (Griswald v. Connecticut) to release a pharmacist for the “crime” of filling a doctor’s prescription for condoms for a married couple where the wife would likely die if she became pregnant and carried the baby to term.
Thomas Jefferson was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. He had previously served as the second vice president of the United States under John Adams between 1797 and 1801. The principal author of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson was a proponent of democracy, republicanism, and individual rights, motivating American colonists to break from the Kingdom of Great Britain and form a new nation; he produced formative documents and decisions at both the state and national levels.
