Jefferson Quotes

The people have been plundered by profiteers... [Saying] that is not demagogy; it is democracy—the democracy of Jefferson. It is not radicalism; it is republicanism—the republicanism of Lincoln.

[Addressing Thomas Jefferson:] Your taste is judicious in liking better the dreams of the future than the history of the past.

Thomas Jefferson once said, 'We should never judge a president by his age, only by his works.' And ever since he told me that, I stopped worrying.

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.

If Thomas Jefferson thought taxation without representation was bad, he should see how it is with representation.

Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence; Madison wrote not only the United States Constitution, or at least most of it, but also the most searching commentary on it that has ever appeared. Each of them served as president of the United States for eight years. What they had to say to each other has to command attention.

Washington, not Jefferson, freed his slaves upon his death.

Within 90 days from the time Lincoln that is inaugurated, the Republican Party will be utterly ruined and destroyed. His path is environed with so many difficulties, that even if he had the ability of Jefferson and the energy of Jackson, he would fail, but he is a weak and inexperienced man, and his administration will be doomed from the commencement. If he takes that radical section of the Republican Party, the conservative wing of it will cut loose and repudiate him. If, on the other hand, he courts the conservatives and pursues a moderate conciliatory policy, the radicals will make open war upon his administration.

Lincoln is distinguished from every other president, with the exception of Jefferson, in that we can be certain that he wrote every word to which his name is attached.

Jefferson, Madison and Washington could not survive in today’s political environment.

The adoption by Jefferson and the Republicans of the political structure of their opponents is of an importance hardly inferior to that of the adoption of the Constitution by the states.

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.

You don’t get to have Thomas Jefferson unless you first have Martin Luther and that brought great turmoil.

The Republican Party started with Lincoln as the party of civil rights. And the Democrats started with Jefferson as the party that did not believe in big government. If Lincoln and Jefferson came back now, they wouldn't know which party to vote for. Jefferson might start another revolution; Lincoln might secede.

Thomas Jefferson once said, "Women shouldn't wrinkle their pretty little foreheads with politics." Now does that mean he was a sexist, or was he just expressing what most males, and maybe most females, felt at that time? Or are both true?

Madison loathed Hamilton and loved Jefferson above all.

There is between Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Adams a diversity of opinion respecting the Algerians. Adams things peace should be purchased from them. Mr. Jefferson finds it as cheap and more honorable to cruise against them. I am inclined to the latter opinion ...

Thomas Jefferson basically secularized Jesus.

On a very personal level, I have fond memories of spending a lot of time in the Library of Congress working on my collection of poems 'Native Guard.' I was there over a summer doing research in the archives and then writing in the reading room at the Jefferson building.

Thomas Jefferson survives.

Slavery was the rare subject where Jefferson’s sense of realism kept him from marshaling his sense of hope in the service of the cause of reform.

In Jefferson's mind democracy was tantamount to extreme individualism.

In America, Jefferson noted with approval, women knew their place.

Mr Jefferson meant that the American system should be a democracy, and he would rather have let the whole world perish than that this principle, which to him represented all that man was worth, should fail. Mr Hamilton considered democracy a fatal curse, and meant to stop its progress.

In seeking an empire of liberty, Jefferson wished not only to expand the country's territorial holdings, but also to extend American institutions around the globe.