Notes on the State of Virginia Quotes

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

― Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia

topic:government

“Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves therefore are its only safe depositories.”

― Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia

topic:governmentpeople

“Dependance begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.”

― Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia

topic:virtueambition

“What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites.”

― Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia

topic:foolishness

“And with what execration should the statesman be loaded, who permitting one half the citizens thus to trample on the rights of the other, transforms those into despots, and these into enemies, destroys the morals of the one part, and the amor...”

― Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia

topic:morality

“The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other.”

― Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia

topic:slavery

“It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigour.”

― Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia

topic:peoplespirit