Reason and free enquiry are the only effectual agents against error.
... Reason and persuasion are the only practicable instruments. To make way for these, free enquiry must be indulged; and how can we wish others to indulge it while we refuse it ourselves. [Query XVII, “Religion”]
The error seems not sufficiently eradicated, that the operations of the mind, as well as the acts of the body, are subjects to the coercion of the laws. But our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we...
Reason and experiment have been indulged, and error has fled before them. It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself. [Query XVII, “Religion”]
Is uniformity of opinion desirable? No more than face or stature ... Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advance one inch towards uniformity. What has been...
I love to see honest men & honorable men at the helm, men who will not bend their politics to their purses, nor pursue measures by which they may profit, & then profit by their measures.
I will never believe that man is incapable of self-government; that he has no resources but in a master, who is but a man like himself, and generally a worse man, inasmuch as power tends to deprave him.
I sincerely wish with you we could see our government so secured as to depend less on the character of the person in whose hands it is trusted. bad men will sometimes get in, & with such an immense patronage, may make great progress in corrupting the public mind & principles. this is a...
3. ... Mr Jefferson said that the Epicurean philosophy came nearest to the truth, in his opinion, of any antient system of philosophy—But that it had been misunderstood and misrepresented—He wished the work of Gassendi concerning it had been translated—It was the only accurate account of it...
we have solved, by fair experiment, the great & interesting question Whether freedom of religion is compatible with order in government, and obedience to the laws. & we have experienced the quiet as well as the comfort which results from leaving every one to profess freely & openly...
to do wrong is a melancholy resource. even where retaliation renders it indispensably necessary. it is better to suffer much from the scalpings, the incensions conflagrations, the rapes and rapine of savages, than to countenance and strengthen such barbarisms by retortion. I have ever deemed it...
Bonaparte, with his repeated derisions of Ideologists (squinting at this author) has by this time felt that true wisdom does not lie in mere practice without principle.
... such is the testimony given me by Mr. Hale, the author of a History of the United States, who numbered among the most fortunate incidents of his life that he made a visit to Monticello. Mr. Jefferson welcomed him, scarcely noticing his letters of introduction, and at once made his...
I too am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing every thing rational in moral philosophy which Greece & Rome have left us. Epictetus indeed has given us what was good of the Stoics; all beyond, of their doctrines dogmas, being hypocrisy and...
this free exercise of reason is all I ask for the vindication of the character of Jesus. we find in the writings of his biographers matter of two distinct descriptions. first a ground work of vulgar ignorance, of things impossible, of superstitions, fanaticisms, & fabrications. intermixed...
Th: Jefferson returns his thanks ... for the eloquent discourse on the Consecration of the Synagogue of Savannah ... it excites in him the gratifying reflection that his own country has been the first to prove to the world two truths, the most salutary to human society, that man can govern...
the human mind will some day get back to the freedom it enjoyed 2000 years ago. this country, which has given to the world the example of physical liberty, owes to it that of moral emancipation also. for, as yet, it is but nominal with us.