Top 55 Jefferson Quotes

Racial rhetoric has been entwined with government from the start, all the way back to when the enemy was not Obamacare but the Grand Army of the Republic (and further in the past than that: Thomas Jefferson, after all, was derided as ‘the Negro President’).

The age of Lincoln and Jefferson memorials is over. It will be presidential libraries from now on.

On a very personal level, I have fond memories of spending a lot of time in the Library of Congress working on my collection of poems ‘Native Guard.’ I was there over a summer doing research in the archives and then writing in the reading room at the Jefferson building.

The tolling of yon dismal bell and the loud but solemn discharge of artillery hath announced to the nation the melancholy tidings – Thomas Jefferson no longer lives!

On the coming of that tremendous storm which for eight years desolated our country, Mr. Jefferson hesitated not, halted not.

The Declaration of Independence I always considered as a theatrical show. Jefferson ran away with all the stage effect of that… and all the glory of it.

It is to such men as Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson and Jackson and Franklin, all most lowly born, that we owe most of our greatness as a nation.

Who would think it possible to redirect historical scholarship by explaining what Thomas Jefferson said in the Declaration of Independence?

In seeking an empire of liberty, Jefferson wished not only to expand the country’s territorial holdings, but also to extend American institutions around the globe.

Growing up, I wasn’t the best player – Richard Jefferson, whom I’ve known since I was 14, will gladly vouch for that, and often does.

Everyone assumes America must play the leading role in crafting some settlement or compromise between the Israelis and the Palestinians. But Jefferson, Madison, and Washington explicitly warned against involving ourselves in foreign conflicts.

Anyway, you know, when Richard Meltzer said rock and roll died in ’68, what he means is Jefferson Airplane were no longer his buddies, that’s what he really means. He means it in a political way: that was when the artists and the audience found themselves on different levels.

The platform we had in Dallas, the 1984 Republican platform, all the ideas we supported there – from tax policy, to foreign policy; from individual rights, to neighborhood security – are things that Jefferson Davis and his people believed in.

In America, Jefferson noted with approval, women knew their place.

There is no right to a job or a wage rate, but there is a right to move from one country to another in search of a better life. This is the point of view of Thomas Jefferson, John Locke and other great supporters of the natural rights tradition in America.

Every White House has had its intellectuals, but very few presidents have been intellectuals themselves – Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Woodrow Wilson, the list more or less stops there.

I think people understand I’m not actually the real Thomas Jefferson.

Essentially, social education is moral education, and moral education is preparation for citizenship… When Jefferson and others advocated public education, it was to prepare for citizenship in a new, constitutional, democratic society.

The myth that John Locke was the philosopher behind the American Republic, is easily refuted by examining how Locke’s philosophy steered Thomas Jefferson, for example.

The fact that Thomas Jefferson owned slaves doesn’t devalue what he wrote.

Lincoln is distinguished from every other president, with the exception of Jefferson, in that we can be certain that he wrote every word to which his name is attached.

After I outlined ‘Catering to Nobody,’ I went and worked for a caterer. And the other thing I had to do was to talk to the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department about how they investigated a crime.

Madame Walker was mythologized like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, but I want to show that she was fabulous on her own.

My grandfather was a lot like a white Jewish George Jefferson, and he did not enjoy my work very much.

I got my Equity card right out of NYU grad school in 2000, doing ‘The Great White Hope’ at Arena Stage. I played Jack Jefferson. It was an amazing part to walk into, to carry that responsibility for that amount of time. The challenges and the breadth of that role were pretty amazing.

I would like Americans to make things with their hands. Thomas Jefferson and I feel that makes for a much stronger nation.

Don’t use your advance to buy an antique sports car, diamonds by the yard, or a bottle of wine from Thomas Jefferson’s cellar instead of investing in your book.

When you’re playing a superhero, you’re almost playing two different people. I separate when I’m playing Jefferson Pierce and the days when I’m playing Black Lightning.

I love heavy metal, Metallica. I’m into Jefferson Starship and acid rock.

I had done a lot of rock ‘n’ roll photography when I was in college. I was one of many photographers who worked for The Doors, Jefferson Airplane, and all of these rock ‘n’ roll bands.

If Thomas Jefferson had heard us, he probably would have said, ‘We shouldn’t have free speech.’

Life in cyberspace seems to be shaping up exactly like Thomas Jefferson would have wanted: founded on the primacy of individual liberty and a commitment to pluralism, diversity, and community.

What I’m thinking about more and more these days is simply the importance of transparency, and Jefferson’s saying that he’d rather have a free press without a government than a government without a free press.

Well, you know, Thomas Jefferson, who was the author of the Declaration of Independence said he wouldn’t have any atheists in his cabinet because atheists wouldn’t swear an oath to God. That was Jefferson and we have never had any Muslims in the cabinet.

From Jefferson to Jackson to Lincoln to FDR to Reagan, every great president inspires enormous affection and enormous hostility. We’ll all be much saner, I think, if we remember that history is full of surprises and things that seemed absolutely certain one day are often unimaginable the next.

My father’s diner, the Jefferson Coffee Shop, was a simple, 27-seat affair in Washington D.C., open for breakfast and lunch – coffee and eggs in the morning, cold cuts and burgers in the afternoon.

Home cooks are finding inspiration in the past, digging up centuries-old recipes more familiar to the likes of Thomas Jefferson than Thomas Keller.

America, to me, is this enormous contrast between the heady idealism of founding fathers such as Thomas Jefferson, who said, ‘All men are created equal,’ and the reality that he was himself a slave owner.

I like to always be able to contest shots. If you play against a player like Al Jefferson – he likes to pump-fake, so you need to be alert and quick. If he pump-fakes you and you go up, when you come back you need to go right back up to contest his shot.

In Jefferson’s mind democracy was tantamount to extreme individualism.

The Rolling Stones are much more accomplished than Jefferson Airplane, who are more like tribal people. That is, they present something which exists: The music and the hippie.

I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered at the White House – with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.

We stand in the shadow of Jefferson who believed that a society founded upon the rule of law and liberty was dependent upon public education and the diffusion of knowledge.

Here was buried Thomas Jefferson Author of the Declaration of American Independence Of the Statute of Virginia for religious freedom & Father of the University of Virginia.

A declaration of the independence of America, and the sovereignty of the United States was drawn by the ingenious and philosophic pen of Thomas Jefferson, Esquire, a delegate from the state of Virginia.

I couldn’t help but to think back to my classmates at Thomas Jefferson High School in San Antonio. They had the same talent, the same brains, the same dreams as the folks we sat with at Stanford and Harvard. I realized the difference wasn’t one of intelligence or drive. The difference was opportunity.

I’ve always envied Thomas Jefferson’s bed at Monticello. It’s in a tiny alcove, bound by walls at the head and foot.

I suppose there’s a melancholy tone at the back of the American mind, a sense of something lost. And it’s the lost world of Thomas Jefferson. It is the lost sense of innocence that we could live with a very minimal state, with a vast sense of space in which to work out freedom.

I said I would be part of the solution in Jefferson City, not part of the problem. And I said I’d take on the culture of corruption.

After the Great Depression and after public urging, a nationwide public competition was held to determine a design for a memorial that would honor President Thomas Jefferson’s bold vision for westward expansion for America.

Not everyone has the survival skills of William Jefferson Clinton.

Jesus and Lincoln, Moses and Jefferson can seem so long gone, so unbelievable, so dead.