Frasi di Thomas Jefferson (474 frasi, pagina 8)

Thomas Jefferson: 474 frasi 27 Mi piace

Thomas Jefferson frasi celebri

“Quando il popolo ha paura del governo, c'è tirannia. Quando il governo ha paura del popolo, c'è libertà.”

Thomas Jefferson

“Consideriamo come verità sacre e innegabili: che tutti gli uomini sono creati uguali e indipendenti, che da questa uguaglianza nella creazione gli uomini derivano diritti inerenti e inalienabili, tra i quali la conservazione della propria vita, la libertà e il diritto alla felicità.”

Thomas Jefferson

Origine: Citato in Dizionario mondiale di Storia, Rizzoli Larousse, Milano, 2003, p. 649. ISBN 88-525-0077-4

“Non posso vivere senza libri.”

Thomas Jefferson

citato in Michael Gelb, Il Genio che c'è in te

“Il prezzo della libertà è un'eterna vigilanza.”

Thomas Jefferson

“Credo sinceramente insieme a te che le establishment bancarie siano più pericolose di armate schierate per la battaglia; e che il principio di spendere denaro che dovrà essere ripagato dalla posteriorità, col nome di finanziamento, non sia altro che truffare il futuro su larga scala.”

Thomas Jefferson

da una lettera a John Taylor http://www.britannica.com/presidents/article-9116907, 28 maggio 1816

“Ogni volta che fai una cosa, agisci come se l'intero mondo ti stia guardando.”

Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson Frasi e Citazioni

“Dio che ci ha donato la vita allo stesso modo ci ha donato la libertà. La mano violenta può distruggerle ma non separarle.”

Thomas Jefferson

Origine: Citato in Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774); The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (19 Vols., 1905) edito da Andrew A. Lipscomb e Albert Ellery Bergh, Vol. 1, p. 211.

Su Dio , Sulla vita , La libertà , Modo

“Attribuire ad ognuno la direzione di ciò che il suo occhio riesce a sorvegliare.”

Thomas Jefferson

dalla lettera a Joseph C. Cabell, 2 febbraio 1816; in Antologia degli scritti politici, p. 109
Origine: Questo precetto è considerato l'anticipazione del principio di sussidiarietà adottato dall'Unione Europea a partire dal Trattato di Maastricht del 1992.

“Ho giurato sull'altare di Dio eterna guerra contro qualsiasi forma di tirannia sulla mente dell'uomo.”

Thomas Jefferson

Origine: Citato in Michael J. Gelb, Il genio che c'è in te.

Sulla guerra

“L'albero della libertà deve essere rinvigorito di tanto in tanto con il sangue dei patrioti e dei tiranni. Esso ne rappresenta il concime naturale.”

Thomas Jefferson

da una lettera a William Stevens Smith, 13 novembre 1787; citato in Adriano Sofri, Tiranno: quando si mette a morte il despota, la Repubblica, 7 novembre 2006, p. 53

Sulla morte , Albero , La libertà

“Nessuno può essere costretto a partecipare o a contribuire pecuniariamente a qualsivoglia culto, edificio o ministero religioso.”

Thomas Jefferson

citato in un articolo di Curzio Maltese, la Repubblica, 25 giugno 2007

Sull'arte

“Una linea geografica coincidente con un principio morale e politico determinato, una volta concepita e conservata a prezzo di passioni esacerbate, non potrà mai venir cancellata. Qualsiasi nuova irritazione non farebbe altro che approfondirla.”

Thomas Jefferson

Origine: Citato in Maurice Denuzière, Louisiana, traduzione di Augusto Donaudy, Rizzoli, Milano, 1980.

Passione

“Lo spirito di resistenza al governo è così prezioso in certe occasioni che mi auguro sia sempre mantenuto vivo. Spesso lo si eserciterà in modo sbagliato, tuttavia meglio esercitato così che non esercitato affatto.”

Thomas Jefferson

da una lettera ad Abigail Adams, 1787

Modo

“È solo l'errore che ha bisogno del sostegno del governo. La verità può esistere da sola. (da Notes on the State of Virginia; citato nella Dichiarazione d'indipendenza del cyberspazio di John Perry Barlow”

Thomas Jefferson

Sulla verità , Errore

“Chi riceve un'idea da me, ricava conoscenza senza diminuire la mia; come chi accende la sua candela con la mia riceve luce senza lasciarmi al buio.”

Thomas Jefferson

dalla lettera a Isaac Mc Pherson del 13 agosto 1813

Conoscenza , Idea , Luce

“Potrei più facilmente credere che due professori yankee mentano che delle pietre possano cadere dal cielo.”

Thomas Jefferson

“Se c’è tra noi chi voglia dissolvere questa Unione o cambiarne la forma repubblicana, lo si lasci indisturbato, a testimonianza della sicurezza con la quale si possono tollerare opinioni errate là dove la ragione è libera di combatterle.”

Thomas Jefferson

“Osa mettere in discussione anche l'esistenza di un Dio; perché se ce n'è uno, egli approverà maggiormente l'omaggio della ragione, piuttosto che quello della cieca paura. (da una lettera al figlioccio Peter Carr)”

Thomas Jefferson

Sulla paura , Su Dio

Thomas Jefferson: Frasi in inglese

“Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains.”

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Thomas Jefferson

Letter to Horatio G. Spafford (17 March 1814)
1810s

“Our cause is just. Our union is perfect. Our internal resources are great, and, if necessary, foreign assistance is undoubtedly attainable. — We gratefully acknowledge, as signal instances of the Divine favour towards us, that his Providence would not permit us to be called into this severe controversy, until we were grown up to our present strength, had been previously exercised in warlike operation, and possessed of the means of defending ourselves. With hearts fortified with these animating reflections, we most solemnly, before God and the world, declare that, exerting the utmost energy of those powers, which our beneficent Creator hath graciously bestowed upon us, the arms we have been compelled by our enemies to assume, we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverence, employ for the preservation of our liberties; being with one mind resolved to die freemen rather than to live slaves.”

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Thomas Jefferson

Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms (1775); Jefferson composed the first draft of this document, but the final work was done by John Dickinson, working with his original draft. Full text online http://www.nationalcenter.org/1775DeclarationofArms.html
1770s

“If by religion, we are understand sectarian dogmas, in which no two of them agree, then your exclamation on that hypothesis is just, "that this would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it." But if the moral precepts, innate in man, and made a part of his physical constitution, as necessary for a social being, if the sublime doctrines of philanthropism and deism taught us by Jesus of Nazareth, in which all agree, constitute true religion, then, without it, this would be, as you again say, "something not fit to be named, even indeed, a hell."”

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Thomas Jefferson

Letter to John Adams, 5 May 1817, in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (Lipscomb-Bergh edition, 1903), Volume XV, p. 109
1810s

“An hereditary chief, strictly limited, the right of war vested in the legislative body, a rigid economy of the public contributions, and absolute interdiction of all useless expenses, will go far towards keeping the government honest and unoppressive. But the only security of all is in a free press. The force of public opinion cannot be resisted, when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary, to keep the waters pure.”

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Thomas Jefferson

Letter to Marquis de la Fayette http://www.constitution.org/tj/jeff10.txt (November 4, 1823); in: The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Memorial Edition (ME) (Lipscomb and Bergh, editors), 20 Vols., Washington, D.C., 1903-04, Volume 15, page 491
1820s

“The two principles on which our conduct towards the Indians should be founded, are justice and fear. After the injuries we have done them, they cannot love us….”

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Thomas Jefferson

Letter to Benjamin Hawkins (13 August 1786) Lipscomb & Bergh ed. 5:390
1780s

“I have received the favor of your letter of August 17th, and with it the volume you were so kind as to send me on the Literature of Negroes. Be assured that no person living wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a complete refutation of the doubts I have myself entertained and expressed on the grade of understanding allotted to them by nature, and to find that in this respect they are on a par with ourselves. My doubts were the result of personal observation on the limited sphere of my own State, where the opportunities for the development of their genius were not favorable, and those of exercising it still less so. I expressed them therefore with great hesitation; but whatever be their degree of talent it is no measure of their rights. Because Sir Isaac Newton was superior to others in understanding, he was not therefore lord of the person or property of others. On this subject they are gaining daily in the opinions of nations, and hopeful advances are making towards their reestablishment on an equal footing with the other colors of the human family.”

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Thomas Jefferson

I pray you therefore to accept my thanks for the many instances you have enabled me to observe of respectable intelligence in that race of men, which cannot fail to have effect in hastening the day of their relief; [...].
Letter to Henri Grégoire http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/mtj:@field(DOCID+@lit(tj110052)) (25 February 1809), as quoted in The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes. Federal Edition. Collected and Edited by Paul Leicester Ford. Also quoted in The Science and Politics of Racial Research by William H. Tucker (1994), p. 11
1800s, Second Presidential Administration (1805-1809)

“The acquisition of Canada this year, as far as the neighborhood of Quebec, will be a mere matter of marching, and will give us experience for the attack of Halifax the next, and the final expulsion of England from the American continent.”

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Thomas Jefferson

Statement during an early stage of the War of 1812, in a letter to William Duane (4 August 1812)
1810s

“From the nature of things, every society must at all times possess within itself the sovereign powers of legislation. The feelings of human nature revolt against the supposition of a state so situated as that it may not in any emergency provide against dangers which perhaps threaten immediate ruin. While those bodies are in existence to whom the people have delegated the powers of legislation, they alone possess and may exercise those powers; but when they are dissolved by the lopping off one or more of their branches, the power reverts to the people, who may exercise it to unlimited extent, either assembling together in person, sending deputies, or in any other way they may think proper.”

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Thomas Jefferson

1770s, A Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774)

“War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses.”

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Thomas Jefferson

Letter to John Sinclair (1798)
1790s

“Some are whigs, liberals, democrats, call them what you please. Others are tories, serviles, aristocrats, &c. The latter fear the people, and wish to transfer all power to the higher classes of society; the former consider the people as the safest depository of power in the last resort; they cherish them therefore, and wish to leave in them all the powers to the exercise of which they are competent.”

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Thomas Jefferson

Letter to William Short http://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/when-government-fears-people-there-libertyquotation (1825)
1820s

“I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government to the genuine principles of its Constitution; I mean an additional article, taking from the federal government the power of borrowing.”

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Thomas Jefferson

Letter to John Taylor (26 November 1798), shortened in The Money Masters to "I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution … taking from the federal government their power of borrowing".
Posthumous publications, On financial matters

“I am convinced our own happiness requires that we should continue to mix with the world, and to keep pace with it as it goes; and that every person who retires from free communication with it is severely punished afterwards by the state of mind into which he gets, and which can only be prevented by feeding our sociable principles. I can speak from experience on this subject. From 1793 to 1797 I remained closely at home, saw none but those who came there, and at length became very sensible of the ill effect it had on my own mind, and of its direct and irresistible tendency to render me unfit for society and uneasy when necessarily engaged in it. I felt enough of the effect of withdrawing from the world then to see that it led to an anti-social and misanthropic state of mind, which severely punishes him who gives in to it; and it will be a lesson I never shall forget as to myself.”

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Thomas Jefferson

Letter to Maria Jefferson Eppes (8 March 1809)
1800s, Post-Presidency (1809)

“But it was found that the public mind would not yet bear the proposition, nor will it bear it even at this day. Yet the day is not distant when it must bear and adopt it, or worse will follow. Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate, than that these people are to be free; nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion have drawn indelible lines of distinction between them.”

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Thomas Jefferson

Autobiography (1821) in notes describing some of the debates of 1779 on slavery.
1820s

“One loves to possess arms, though they hope never to have occasion for them.”

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Thomas Jefferson

Letter to George Washington (1796); published in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, 20 Vols., Washington, D.C., (1903-04), 9:341
1790s

“Agreeably to the request of the House of Representatives, communicated in their resolution of the 16th instant, I proceed to state under the reserve therein expressed, information received touching an illegal combination of private individuals against the peace and safety of the Union, and a military expedition planned by them against the territories of a power in amity with the United States, with the measures I have pursued for suppressing the same….
But by information received yesterday I learn that on the 22d of December, Mr. Burr descended the Cumberland with two boats merely of accommodation, carrying with him from that State no quota toward his unlawful enterprise. Whether after the arrival of the proclamation, of the orders, or of our agent, any exertion which could be made by that State, or the orders of the governor of Kentucky for calling out the militia at the mouth of Cumberland, would be in time to arrest these boats, and those from the falls of the Ohio, is still doubtful.”

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Thomas Jefferson

Special Message to Congress on the Burr Conspiracy, declaring his former Vice President an illegal conspirator and a fugitive from justice (22 January 1807)
1800s, Second Presidential Administration (1805-1809)

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

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Thomas Jefferson

Letter to Larkin Smith (1809)
1800s, Post-Presidency (1809)

“The truth is, that the greatest enemies of the doctrine of Jesus are those, calling themselves the expositors of them, who have perverted them to the structure of a system of fancy absolutely incomprehensible, and without any foundation in his genuine words. And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter … But may we hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated reformer of human errors.”

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Thomas Jefferson

Letter http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/jefferson_adams.html to John Adams (11 April 1823) (Scan at The Library of Congress) http://memory.loc.gov/master/mss/mtj/mtj1/053/0800/0844.jpg
1820s

“Instead of funding issues of paper on the hypothecation of specific redeeming taxes (the only method of anticipating, in a time of war, the resources of times of peace, tested by the experience of nations), we are trusting to tricks of jugglers on the cards, to the illusions of banking schemes for the resources of the war, and for the cure of colic to inflations of more wind.”

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Thomas Jefferson

Letter to José Correia da Serra (1814) ME 14:224
Posthumous publications, On financial matters

“The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.”

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Thomas Jefferson

According to the Jefferson Library, this is among the many statements misattributed to Jefferson. http://wiki.monticello.org/mediawiki/index.php/Category:Spurious_Quotations
Misattributed

“Architecture worth great attention. As we double our numbers every 20 years we must double our houses. Besides we build of such perishable materials that one half of our houses must be rebuilt in every space of 20 years. So that in that term, houses are to be built for three fourths of our inhabitants. It is then among the most important arts: and it is desireable to introduce taste into an art which shews so much.”

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Thomas Jefferson

Hints to Americans travelling in Europe, letter to John Rutledge, Jr. (June 19, 1788); in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Julian P. Boyd (1956), vol. 13, p. 269
1780s

“Let the eye of vigilance never be closed.”

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Thomas Jefferson

Letter to Spencer Roane (9 March 1821)
1820s

“The bank mania is one of the most threatening of these imitations. It is raising up a moneyed aristocracy in our country which has already set the government at defiance, and although forced at length to yield a little on this first essay of their strength, their principles are unyielded and unyielding. These have taken deep root in the hearts of that class from which our legislators are drawn, and the sop to Cerberus from fable has become history. Their principles lay hold of the good, their pelf of the bad, and thus those whom the Constitution had placed as guards to its portals, are sophisticated or suborned from their duties.”

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Thomas Jefferson

Letter to Josephus B. Stuart (May 10, 1817) ME 15:112; reported in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Andrew A. Lipscomb (1904), vol. 15, p. 112
Posthumous publications, On financial matters

“And even should the cloud of barbarism and despotism again obscure the science and libraries of Europe, this country remains to preserve and restore light and liberty to them. In short, the flames kindled on the fourth of July, 1776, have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism; on the contrary, they will consume these engines and all who work them.”

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Thomas Jefferson

Letter to John Adams (12 September 1821)
1820s

“The States should be urged to concede to the General Government, with a saving of chartered rights, the exclusive power of establishing banks of discount for paper.”

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Thomas Jefferson

ME http://www.yamaguchy.netfirms.com/7897401/jefferson/eppes2.html 13:431
1810s, Letters to John Wayles Eppes (1813)

“I sincerely rejoice at the acceptance of our new Constitution by nine States. It is a good canvas, on which some strokes only want retouching. What these are, I think are sufficiently manifested by the general voice from north to south, which calls for a bill of rights.”

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Thomas Jefferson

Letter to James Madison (July 31, 1788); reported in Memoir, correspondence, and miscellanies from the papers of Thomas Jefferson, Volumes 1-2 (1829), p. 343
1780s

“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.”

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Thomas Jefferson

Letter to Dr. Maese, 1809. ME 12:231
1800s, Post-Presidency (1809)

“Paper is poverty,… it is only the ghost of money, and not money itself.”

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Thomas Jefferson

Letter to Colonel Edward Carrington (27 May 1788) ME 7:36
1780s

“I had for a long time ceased to read newspapers, or pay any attention to public affairs, confident they were in good hands, and content to be a passenger in our bark to the shore from which I am not distant. But this momentous question, like a firebell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union. I regret that I am now to die in the belief that the useless sacrifice of themselves by the generation of 1776 to acquire self-government and happiness to their country is to be thrown away, and my only consolation is to be that I live not to weep over it.”

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Thomas Jefferson

On the Missouri Compromise, in a letter to John Holmes (22 April 1820), published in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: 1816-1826 (1899) edited by Paul Leicester Ford, v. 10, p. 157; also quoted by Martin Luther King, Jr. in his Emancipation Proclamation Centennial Address http://www.nps.gov/anti/historyculture/mlk-ep.htm at the New York Civil War Centennial Commission’s Emancipation Proclamation Observance, New York City (12 September 1962)
1820s

“Necessity, as well as patriotism and confidence, will make us all eager to receive treasury notes, if founded on specific taxes. Congress may borrow of the public, and without interest, all the money they may want, to the amount of a competent circulation, by merely issuing their own promissory notes, of proper denominations for the larger purposes of circulation, but not for the small. Leave that door open for the entrance of metallic money.”

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Thomas Jefferson

Letter to Thomas Cooper, 1814. ME 14:189
Posthumous publications, On financial matters

“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.”

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Thomas Jefferson

Letter to Abbe Salimankis (1810) ME 12:379 The Writings of Thomas Jefferson "Memorial Edition" (20 Vols., 1903-04) edited by Andrew A. Lipscomb and Albert Ellery Bergh, Vol. 12, p. 379; also quoted at "Thomas Jefferson on Politics & Government: Money & Banking" at University of Virginia http://etext.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jeff1325.htm
Posthumous publications, On financial matters