Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Related Quotes

Thomas Jefferson

Good wishes are all an old man has to offer to his country or friends.

God | Justice | Life | Life | Men | Thought | God | Thought |

Thomas Jefferson

God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure if we have removed their only firm basis: a conviction in the minds of men that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever.

Business | Commerce | Fate | God | Justice | Law | Life | Life | Nothing | People | Fate | Business | Commerce | God |

Thomas Jefferson

Certainly no nation ever before abandoned to the avarice and jugglings of private individuals to regulate according to their own interests, the quantum of circulating medium for the nation — to inflate, by deluges of paper, the nominal prices of property, and then to buy up that property at 1s. in the pound, having first withdrawn the floating medium which might endanger a competition in purchase. Yet this is what has been done, and will be done, unless stayed by the protecting hand of the legislature. The evil has been produced by the error of their sanction of this ruinous machinery of banks; and justice, wisdom, duty, all require that they should interpose and arrest it before the schemes of plunder and spoliation desolate the country.

God | Justice | Means | Nature | People | Revolution | Thought | God | Thought |

Thomas Hughes

Be ever engaged, so that whenever the devil calls he may find you occupied.

Fortune | Justice | Resolution | Will | Woman |

Thomas Jefferson

I view great cities as pestilential to the morals, the health and the liberties of man. True, they nourish some of the elegant arts; but the useful ones can thrive elsewhere; and less perfection in the others, with more health, virtue and freedom, would be my choice.

God | Justice | God |

Thomas Jefferson

I believe this... the strongest government on earth. I believe it is the only one where every man, at the call of the laws, would fly to the standard of the law, and would meet invasions of the public order as his own personal concern.

Instinct | Justice | Sense | Wise |

Thomas Jefferson

Above all things I hope the education of the common people will be attended to, convinced that on their good sense we may rely with the most security for the preservation of a due degree of liberty.

Absolute | Age | Care | Commerce | Creed | Error | Freedom | Government | Justice | Labor | Peace | People | Principles | Public | Revolution | Right | Sacred | Safe | War | Will | Wisdom | Friendship | Government | Trial | Commerce | Parent | Understand |

Thomas Jefferson

In case of an abuse of the delegated powers, the members of the General Government, being chosen by the people, a change by the people would be the constitutional remedy.

God | Justice | Labor | Man | Means | Nature | People | Revolution | Thought | Will | God | Thought |

Thomas Jefferson

It is said that our paper is as good as silver, because we may have silver for it at the bank where it issues. This is not true. One, two, or three persons might have it; but a general application would soon exhaust their vaults, and leave a ruinous proportion of their paper in its intrinsic worthless form.

Justice |

Thomas Jefferson

Independence can be trusted nowhere but with the people in mass. They are inherently independent of all but moral law.

God | Justice | God |

Thomas Jefferson

The most successful war seldom pays for its losses.

Government | Justice | Sacred | Government |

Thomas Jefferson

It is not wisdom alone but public confidence in that wisdom which can support an administration.

Justice | Means | Moderation | Trust | Will | Moderation |

Thomas Jefferson

Nothing is so mistaken as the supposition that a person is to extricate himself from a difficulty by intrigue, by chicanery, by dissimulation, by trimming, by an untruth, by an injustice. This increases the difficulties tenfold; and those who pursue these methods get themselves so involved at length that they can turn no way by their infamy becomes more exposed.

Important | Justice | Peace | Policy | Principles |

Thomas Jefferson

The uniform tenor of a man's life furnishes better evidence of what he has said or done on any particular occasion than the word of any enemy.

Conduct | Justice | Love | Principles |

Thomas Jefferson

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with inherent and inalienable rights; that among these, are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed;

Justice | Self-preservation |

Thomas Jefferson

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.

Better | Conduct | Justice | Thought | Trust | Thought |

Thomas Merton

Contradictions have always existed in the soul of [individuals]. But it is only when we prefer analysis to silence that they become a constant and insoluble problem. We are not meant to resolve all contradictions but to live with them and rise above them and see them in the light of exterior and objective values which make them trivial by comparison.

Contemplation | Day | Desolation | Devotion | Discipline | God | Joy | Justice | Labor | Magic | Obscurity | Obscurity | Peace | Relationship | Security | Spirit | Suffering | World | God | Contemplation | Happiness |

Thomas Merton

Hope not because you think you can be good, but because God loves us irrespective of our merits and whatever is good in us comes from his love, not from our own doing.

Justice | Love | Mercy |

Thomas Nagel

Some people believe in an afterlife. I do not; what I say will be based on the assumption that death is nothing, and final. I believe there is little to be said for it: it is a great curse, and if we truly face it nothing can make it palatable except the knowledge that by dying we can prevent an even grater evil. Otherwise, given the simple choice between living for another week and dying in five minutes I would always choose to live for another week; and by a version of mathematical induction I conclude that I would be glad to live forever.

Existence | Injustice | Injustice | Justice | Property | Rights | System |

Thomas Merton

Where there is no love of man, no love of life, then make all the laws you want, all the edicts and treaties, issue all the anathemas; set up all the safeguards and inspections, fill the air with spying satellites, and hang cameras on the moon. As long as you see your fellow man being essentially to be feared, mistrusted, hated, and destroyed, there cannot be peace on Earth.

Fear | Justice | Love | Man | Peace | Respect | War | Will | World | Respect |