Was the government to prescribe to us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are now. [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 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...

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...

... 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...

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...