Laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. . . . We might as well require a man to wear the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain forever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.
Thomas JeffersonMany are the exercises of power reserved to the States wherein a uniformity of proceeding would be advantageous to all. Such are quarantines, health laws, regulations of the press, banking institutions, training militia, etc., etc.
Thomas JeffersonInstead of that liberty which takes root and growth in the progress of reason, if recovered by mere force or accident, it becomes with an unprepared people a tyranny still of the many, the few, or the one.
Thomas JeffersonA society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both, and deserve neither.
Thomas JeffersonSIR,-Your letter of February the 18th came to hand on the 1st instant; and the request of the history of my physical habits would have puzzled me not a little, had it not been for the model with which you accompanied it, of Doctor Rush's answer to a similar inquiry. I live so much like other people, that I might refer to ordinary life as a history of my own. Like my friend the Doctor, I have lived temperately, eating very little animal food, and that not as an aliment, so much as a condiment for the vegetables, which constitute my principle diet.
Thomas Jefferson