Action will delineate and define you

Quotes from Thomas Jefferson

I spent the morning with the works of Thomas Jefferson, as well as historic accounts of the “First Party” era - a period that defined American politics from around 1792 to 1818.

Jefferson is of course, the principle writer of the Declaration of Independence.

Although Jefferson is still a name that everyone “knows,” I believe that a re-analysis of his writings reveals just how modern his thinking on politics and society was. He was a visionary and his writings deserve to be brought to the forefront of this movement to take back our government from the global forces and new world order. We can not let those who wish to smear his writings with the tar of his personal life revise history to the point where we lose his important voice. He truly is the founding father for our rights as individuals.

Some history: Thomas Jefferson was an American statesman, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Father - a true renaissance man. He served as the 3rd president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. Thomas Jefferson was the second vice president of the United States and the first US secretary of state under George Washington. Jefferson was an advocate for democracy, republicanism, and individual rights. He helped motivate American colonists to break from the clutches of Great Britain to form a new nation and in this capacity, he produced formative documents and decisions at both state and national levels. As the second Governor of Virginia and as a Virginia legislator, he drafted an important state law for religious freedom.

Jefferson and James Madison organized the Democratic-Republican Party to oppose the Federalist Party. The Federalist party championed a strong national government and a decreasing role for states rights. Anonymously, Jefferson and Madison wrote the provocative Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions in 1798 and 1799. Those documents sought to strengthen states' rights by nullifying the federal Alien and Sedition Acts (wiki).

The Democratic-Republican Party originated as a faction in Congress that opposed the centralization of Federal power that Alexander Hamilton promoted. After the 1800 elections, Republicans came into power and the Federalist party slowly disappeared over the next two decades.

It is the polarizing viewpoints of Jefferson and Hamilton that capture what became the Constitution of the United States. The heart of that conflict is states rights versus Federal rights. Hamilton represented the banking system (including the Federalization of the banking system) and international business, and he viewed the British as strong allies. Jefferson represented the farmers and planters - small businesses and individual rights as well as states rights and sided with the French in the French revolution.

It is the writings of Jefferson, in letters, documents and his legislative works, where his brilliance still shines.

As we fight again for our constitution and sovereignty against global fascism and the World Economic Forum, I believe that turning back to the writings of Jefferson for insight is an exercise worth doing.

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To quote Thomas Jefferson:

“Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.”
― Thomas Jefferson, Letters of Thomas Jefferson

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

“I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. Unsuccessful rebellions indeed generally establish the encroachments on the rights of the people which have produced them. An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions, as not to discourage them too much. It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.”
― Thomas Jefferson, Letters of Thomas Jefferson

“I know 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 by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.”
― Thomas Jefferson, Letters of Thomas Jefferson

“Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time, who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done, if we are always doing.”
― Thomas Jefferson, Letters of Thomas Jefferson

“I had rather be shut up in a very modest cottage with my books, my family and a few old friends, dining on simple bacon, and letting the world roll on as it liked, than to occupy the most splendid post, which any human power can give.”
― Thomas Jefferson, Letters of Thomas Jefferson

“The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ... What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.”
― Thomas Jefferson, Letters of Thomas Jefferson

“Do you want to know who you are? Don't ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“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.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“Honesty is the first chapter of the book wisdom.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“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.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“I'm a greater believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“We in America do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate.”
― Thomas Jefferson

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

“Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions any more than our opinions in physics or geometry...”
― Thomas Jefferson, Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom

“History, in general, only informs us what bad government is.”
― Thomas Jefferson, Letters of Thomas Jefferson

"I find friendship to be like wine, raw when new, ripened with age, the true old man's milk and restorative cordial."― Thomas Jefferson

"No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of the garden...But though an old man, I am but a young gardener.” ― Thomas Jefferson

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Finally, those infamous (short) Jefferson Quotes

Never put off till to-morrow what you can do to-day.

Never trouble another for what you can do yourself.

Never spend your money before you have it.

Never buy what you do not want, because it is cheap; it will be dear to you.

Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst, and cold.

We never repent of having eaten too little.

Nothing is troublesome that we do willingly.

Take things always by their smooth handle.

When angry, count ten, before you speak; if very angry, a hundred.

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