Frases de Thomas Jefferson

página 12

“No es posible vivir sin libros.”

“Cuando los gobiernos temen a la gente, hay libertad. Cuando la gente teme al gobierno, hay tiranía.”

“No gastes tu dinero antes de ganarlo.”

“La vida carece de valor si no nos produce satisfacciones. Entre éstas, la más valiosa es la sociedad racional, que ilustra la mente, suaviza el temperamento, alegra el ánimo y promueve la salud.”

“No se debe ser demasiado severo con los errores del pueblo, sino tratar de eliminarlos por la educación.”

“Dios nos libre de pasar 20 años sin una rebelión.”

“Una opinión equivocada puede ser tolerada donde la razón es libre de combatirla.”

“El árbol de la libertad debe ser vigorizado de vez en cuando con la sangre de patriotas y tiranos: es su fertilizante natural.”

“Creo que la ley más importante con diferencia de todo nuestro código es la de la difusión del conocimiento entre el pueblo. No se puede idear otro fundamento seguro para conservar la libertad y la felicidad. […] Aboga, mi estimado compañero, por una cruzada contra la ignorancia; establece y mejora la ley de educar a la gente común. Informa a nuestros compatriotas […] de que el impuesto que se pague con el propósito [de educar] no es más que la milésima parte de lo que se tendrá que pagar a los reyes, sacerdotes y nobles que ascenderán al poder si dejamos al pueblo en ignorancia.”

“No son la riqueza ni el esplendor, sino la tranquilidad y la ocupación los que dan la felicidad.”

“Nunca he podido concebir cómo un ser racional podría perseguir la felicidad ejerciendo el poder sobre otros.”

“Cuando alguien asume un cargo público debe considerarse a sí mismo como propiedad pública.”

“El dinero y no la moral es el principio de las naciones fuertes.”

“La democracia no es más que el gobierno de las masas, donde un 51% de la gente puede lanzar por la borda los derechos del otro 49%.”

“Me gustan más los sueños del futuro que la historia del pasado.”

“Quien recibe una idea de mí, recibe instrucción sin disminuir la mía; igual que quien enciende su vela con la mía, recibe luz sin que yo quede a oscuras. […] Las invenciones no pueden, por naturaleza, ser objeto de propiedad.”

“¿A dónde podrá ir el que hasta aquí llegó, si más allá sólo fueron los muertos?”

“Algunas veces se dice que no se le puede confiar al hombre el gobierno de sí mismo. ¿Puede, entonces, confiársele el gobierno de los demás? ¿O hemos encontrado ángeles que asumen la forma de reyes para gobernarlo? Dejemos que la historia conteste esta pregunta.”

“Creen que cualquier trozo de poder confiado en mí, será ejercido en oposición a sus confabulaciones. Y creen bien; porque he jurado sobre el altar de Dios hostilidad eterna contra cada forma de tiranía sobre la mente del hombre. Pero esto es todo lo que tienen que temer de mí: y esto basta, también, en su opinión.”

“Creo, sinceramente, como tú, que los sistemas bancarios son más peligrosos que los ejércitos.”

“Creo que es un gran error considerar cobrar altos impuestos a los vinos como un impuesto al lujo, si lo hiciéramos estaríamos cobrándole impuestos a la salud de nuestros ciudadanos.”

“El arte de la vida es el arte de evitar el dolor.”

“El hombre que no teme a las verdades, nada debe temer a las mentiras.”

“Es más honorable reparar un mal que persistir en él.”

“Estoy a favor de un gobierno que sea vigorosamente frugal y sencillo.”

“Indudablemente nadie se ocupa de quien no se ocupa de nadie.”

“La fusión de los blancos con negros produce una degradación a la que ningún amante de su país, ningún amante de la excelencia en el carácter humano, puede inocentemente consentir.”

“Los mejores momentos de mi vida han sido aquellos que he disfrutado en mi hogar, en el seno de mi familia.”

“Mi estudio de la historia me convence de que la mayoría de los malos resultados de los gobiernos provienen de tener demasiado gobierno.”

“Nadie abandona el cargo de presidente con el mismo prestigio y respeto que le llevó ahí.”

“No hay talento más valioso que el de no usar dos palabras cuando basta una.”

“No puede esperarse que los hombres sean trasladados del despotismo a la libertad en un lecho de plumas.”

“Si hacemos una buena acción simplemente por amor a Dios y el convencimiento de que ello le complace, ¿de donde proviene la moralidad del ateo?... Su virtud, pues, debe haber tenido otro fundamento que el amor de Dios.”

“Siempre he dicho, y siempre diré que la lectura cuidadosa y diligente del Libro Sagrado produce mejores ciudadanos […] La Biblia produce las mejores personas del mundo.”

“Toma las cosas por el lado bueno.”

“Un poco de rebelión de vez en cuando es buena cosa.”

“Verdaderamente tiemblo por mi patria cuando pienso que Dios existe.”

“Yo creo bastante en la suerte. Y he constatado que, cuanto más duro trabajo, más suerte tengo.”

“Creo, sinceramente, con ustedes, que los establecimientos bancarios son más peligrosos que los ejércitos permanentes y que el principio de gastar dinero para ser pagado por la posteridad, bajo el nombre de la financiación, es sin embargo una estafa futura a gran escala. El sistema de la banca nosotros lo hemos reprobado por igual. Yo lo contemplo como un borrón en todas nuestras constituciones, que, si no se protegen, terminará en su destrucción, ya que ya están siendo golpeadas por los jugadores corruptos, y está arrasando en su progreso, la fortuna y la moral de nuestros ciudadanos.”

“No muerdas el cebo del placer hasta no estar seguro de que no oculta un anzuelo.”

“This enterprise is for the young; for those who can follow it up, and bear it through to its consummation.”

“The policy of American government is to leave its citizens free, neither restraining them nor aiding them in their pursuits.”

“No one has a natural right to the trade of a money lender, but he who has the money to lend. Let those then among us who have a moneyed capital and who prefer employing it in loans rather than otherwise, set up banks and give cash or national bills for the notes they discount. Perhaps, to encourage them, a larger interest than is legal in the other cases might be allowed them, on the condition of their lending for short periods only.”

“To the existence of banks of discount for cash… there can be no objection, because there can be no danger of abuse, and they are a convenience both to merchants and individuals. I think they should even be encouraged, by allowing them a larger than legal interest on short discounts, and tapering thence, in proportion as the term of discount is lengthened, down to legal interest on those of a year or more. Even banks of deposit, where cash should be lodged, and a paper acknowledgment taken out as its representative, entitled to a return of the cash on demand, would be convenient for remittances, travelling persons, etc. But, liable as its cash would be to be pilfered and robbed, and its paper to be fraudulently re-issued, or issued without deposit, it would require skilful and strict regulation.”

“There are extraordinary situations which require extraordinary interposition. An exasperated people, who feel that they possess power, are not easily restrained within limits strictly regular.”

“As pure a son of liberty as I have ever known.”

“I say, the earth belongs to each of these generations during its course, fully and in its own right. The second generation receives it clear of the debts and incumbrances of the first, the third of the second, and so on. For if the first could charge it with a debt, then the earth would belong to the dead and not to the living generation. Then, no generation can contract debts greater than may be paid during the course of its own existence.”

“There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me.”

“The naturalists, you know, distribute the history of nature into three kingdoms or departments: zoology, botany, mineralogy. Ideology, or mind, however, occupies so much space in the field of science, that we might perhaps erect it into a fourth kingdom or department. But inasmuch as it makes a part of the animal construction only, it would be more proper to subdivide zoology into physical and moral.”

“To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of materialism by Locke, Tracy, and Stewart. At what age of the Christian church this heresy of immaterialism, this masked atheism, crept in, I do not know. But heresy it certainly is. […] I am satisfied, and sufficiently occupied with the things which are, without tormenting or troubling myself about those which may indeed be, but of which I have no evidence.”

“Considering the general tendency to multiply offices and dependencies and to increase expense to the ultimate term of burden which the citizen can bear, it behooves us to avail ourselves of every occasion which presents itself for taking off the surcharge; that it never may be seen here that, after leaving to labor the smallest portion of its earnings on which it can subsist, Government shall itself consume the whole residue of what it was instituted to guard.”

“Everything predicted by the enemies of banks, in the beginning, is now coming to pass. We are to be ruined now by the deluge of bank paper. It is cruel that such revolutions in private fortunes should be at the mercy of avaricious adventurers, who, instead of employing their capital, if any they have, in manufactures, commerce, and other useful pursuits, make it an instrument to burden all the interchanges of property with their swindling profits, profits which are the price of no useful industry of theirs.”

“The government of the United States have no idea of paying their debt in a depreciated medium, and… in the final liquidation of the payments which shall have been made, due regard will be had to an equitable allowance for the circumstance of depreciation.”

“They might need a preparatory discourse on the text of 'prove all things, hold fast that which is good,' in order to unlearn the lesson that reason is an unlawful guide in religion. They might startle on being first awaked from the dreams of the night, but they would rub their eyes at once, and look the spectres boldly in the face.”

“The good old Dominion, the blessed mother of us all.”

“I regret that I am now to die in the belief, that the useless sacrifice of themselves by the generation of 1776, to acquire self- government and happiness to their country, is to be thrown away by the unwise and unworthy passions of their sons, and that my only consolation is to be, that I live not to weep over it. If they would but dispassionately weigh the blessings they will throw away, against an abstract principle more likely to be effected by union than by scission, they would pause before they would perpetrate this act of suicide on themselves, and of treason against the hopes of the world. To yourself, as the faithful advocate of the Union, I tender the offering of my high esteem and respect.”

“We think in America that it is necessary to introduce the people into every department of government as far as they are capable of exercising it; and that this is the only way to ensure a long-continued and honest administration of it's powers. 1. They are not qualified to exercise themselves the EXECUTIVE department: but they are qualified to name the person who shall exercise it. With us therefore they chuse this officer every 4. years. 2. They are not qualified to LEGISLATE. With us therefore they only chuse the legislators. 3. They are not qualified to JUDGE questions of law; but they are very capable of judging questions of fact. In the form of JURIES therefore they determine all matters of fact, leaving to the permanent judges to decide the law resulting from those facts. Butwe all know that permanent judges acquire an esprit de corps; that, being known, they are liable to be tempted by bribery; that they are misled by favor, by relationship, by a spirit of party, by a devotion to the executive or legislative; that it is better to leave a cause to the decision of cross and pile than to that of a judge biased to one side; and that the opinion of twelve honest jurymen gives still a better hope of right than cross and pile does. It is left therefore, to the juries, if they think the permanent judges are under any bias whatever in any cause, to take on themselves to judge the law as well as the fact. They never exercise this power but when they suspect partiality in the judges; and by the exercise of this power they have been the firmest bulwarks of English liberty.”

“If a due participation of office is a matter of right, how are vacancies to be obtained? Those by death are few; by resignation, none.”

“For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well organized and armed militia is their best security.”

“God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. 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.”

“If a law is unjust, a man is not only right to disobey it, he is obligated to do so.”

“I agree with you that it is the duty of every good citizen to use all the opportunities, which occur to him, for preserving documents relating to the history of our country.”

“It is not by the consolidation or concentration, of powers, but by their distribution that good government is effected.”

“The principle of rotation… in the body of [bank] directors… breaks in upon the esprit de corps so apt to prevail in permanent bodies; it gives a chance for the public eye penetrating into the sanctuary of those proceedings and practices, which the avarice of the directors may introduce for their personal emolument, and which the resentments of excluded directors, or the honesty of those duly admitted, might betray to the public; and it gives an opportunity at the end of the year, or at other periods, of correcting a choice, which on trial, proves to have been unfortunate.”

“I believe… that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another.”

“From the nature and purpose of civil institutions, all the lands within the limits which any particular society has circumscribed around itself are assumed by that society, and subject to their allotment only. This may be done by themselves, assembled collectively, or by their legislature, to whom they may have delegated sovereign authority; and if they are alloted in neither of these ways, each individual of the society may appropriate to himself such lands as he finds vacant, and occupancy will give him title.”

“When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.”

“We have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, self-preservation in the other.”

“The abolition of the evil is not impossible; it ought never therefore to be despaired of. Every plan should be adopted, every experiment tried, which may do something towards the ultimate object.”