Pearls of Wisdom, From T. Jefferson.

"Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong."

-Thomas Jefferson (Notes on Virginia, 1782.)



"I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent."

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Francis Hopkinson, March 13, 1789.



"You say you are a Calvinist. I am not. I am of a sect by myself, as far as I know."

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Ezra Stiles Ely, June 25, 1819.



"Man once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind."

-Thomas Jefferson, to James Smith, 1822.



"But 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 (Notes on Virginia, 1782.)



"Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting "Jesus Christ," so that it would read "A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;" the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination."

-Thomas Jefferson (Autobiography, in reference to the Virginia Act for Religious Freedom.)