Jeffersonian Principles

[Anonymous]

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"When once a Republic is Corrupted, there is No Possibility of Remedying any of the Growing Evils but by Removing the Corruption and Restoring its Lost Principles; Every other correction is either Useless or a New Evil."
                               ~ Thomas Jefferson  
 
Franklin

Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight.

For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions, even on important subjects, which I once thought right but found to be otherwise.

There was never a good war, or a bad peace.

They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security.

Wars are not paid for in wartime, the bill comes later.

Where liberty is, there is my country.


Jefferson

One man with courage is a majority.

When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe.

Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.

Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.

I have sworn upon the alter of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

Leave no authority existing not responsible to the people.


When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.

The spirit of this country is totally adverse to a large military force.

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

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.

Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.

The earth belongs to the living, not to the dead.

To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.


The god who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time: the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.


Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none.

Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy, and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it.

The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.

The most successful war seldom pays for its losses.

The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.

Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor.

No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free no one ever will.

That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.

That government is the strongest of which every man feels himself a part.

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.

No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.


I abhor war and view it as the greatest scourge of mankind.

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.


Money, not morality, is the principle commerce of civilized nations.

It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.

It is our duty still to endeavor to avoid war; but if it shall actually take place, no matter by whom brought on, we must defend ourselves. If our house be on fire, without inquiring whether it was fired from within or without, we must try to extinguish it.

If there is one principle more deeply rooted in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest.

Power is not alluring to pure minds.

Whenever you do a thing, act as if all the world were watching.

I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be.

I believe that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another.

My theory has always been, that if we are to dream, the flatteries of hope are as cheap, and pleasanter, than the gloom of despair.

Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.

A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.

I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master.

Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.

No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of the garden.

Information is the currency of democracy.

It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.

A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.

The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind.

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.


The moment a person forms a theory, his imagination sees in every object only the traits which favor that theory.

Errors of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.

There is not a truth existing which I fear... or would wish unknown to the whole world.

Resort is had to ridicule only when reason is against us.

Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.

Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state.

There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents.


Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.

A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor and bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government.

Peace and abstinence from European interferences are our objects, and so will continue while the present order of things in America remain uninterrupted.

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.

Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.

Every generation needs a new revolution.

We may consider each generation as a distinct nation, with a right, by the will of its majority, to bind themselves, but none to bind the succeeding generation, more than the inhabitants of another country.

It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.

For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their best security.

Liberty is to the collective body, what health is to every individual body. Without health no pleasure can be tasted by man; without liberty, no happiness can be enjoyed by society.

Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.

All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.

I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.

Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government.

History, in general, only informs us of what bad government is.

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.

I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.

I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.


In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.

Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of a Censor - over each other.

I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology.

It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God.


The way to silence religious disputes is to take no notice of them.


It is in our lives and not our words that our religion must be read.

I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others.

The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it.

In every country and every age, the priest had been hostile to Liberty.

Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear


The world is indebted for all triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression.

Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto.

I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion.

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

As our enemies have found we can reason like men, so now let us show them we can fight like men also.

I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.

Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.

Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.

Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence.

Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct.

I am mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, the sale of a book can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too.

I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.

I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led, and bearding every authority which stood in their way.

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.

If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour?

Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.

Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed us, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits.

I am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greek and Roman leave to us.


Epicurus


There is no such thing as justice in the abstract; it is merely a compact between men.

Freedom is the greatest fruit of self-sufficiency.

Only the just man enjoys peace of mind.


There is nothing to fear from the gods. There is nothing to fear from death. Pain can be endured. Happiness can be attained.

You don't develop courage by being happy in your relationships everyday. You develop it by surviving difficult times and challenging adversity.

Not what we have But what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance.

The flesh endures the storms of the present alone, the mind those of the past and future as well as the present.

We cannot live pleasantly without living wisely and nobly and righteously.

It is better for you to be free of fear lying upon a pallet,than to have a golden couch and a rich table and be full of trouble.

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?

Those who tell the young man to live well and the old man to die well is nothing but a fool, not only for what life has in happiness to both young and old, but also for one must be careful in live honestly as well as die honestly.

Skillful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempest.

Misfortune seldom intrudes upon the wise man; his greatest and highest interests are directed by reason throughout the course of life.


Of all things which wisdom provides to make life entirely happy, much the greatest is the possession of friendship.
 
A free life cannot acquire many possessions, because this is not easy to do without servility to mobs or monarchs.

Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist.
Justice... is a kind of compact not to harm or be harmed.

If God listened to the prayers of men, all men would quickly have perished: for they are forever praying for evil against one another.

If thou wilt make a man happy, add not unto his riches but take away from his desires.

It is impossible to live a pleasant life without living wisely and well and justly. And it is impossible to live wisely and well and justly without living a pleasant life.

[Ralph Furely]

Shit.  I thought that said 'Jefferson Airplane'.