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What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man! Who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment and death itself in vindication of his own liberty, and the next moment, be deaf to all those motives whose powers supported him through his trial, and inflict on his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose.

— Thomas Jefferson

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Slavery

More quotes by Thomas Jefferson

I have sworn upon the altar of god eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.

I have ever deemed it more honorable and profitable, too, to set a good example than to follow a bad one.

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

The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them.

Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774)

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We spend our lives fighting to get people very slightly more stupid than ourselves to accept truths that the great men have always known.

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What constitutes the bulwark of our own liberty and independence?

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The worker is the slave of capitalist society, the female worker is the slave of that slave.

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The Autocrat of all the Russias will resign his crown, and proclaim his subjects free republicans sooner than will our American masters voluntarily give up their slaves.

Abraham Lincoln

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Thomas Jefferson (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.