"The cutting of heads is become so..." - Quote by Thomas Jefferson
The cutting of heads is become so much a la mode, that one is apt to feel of a morning whether their own is on their shoulders.
More by Thomas Jefferson
“I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be.”
“At the time we were funding our national debt, we heard much about "a public debt being a public blessing"; that the stock representing it was a creation of active capital for the aliment of commerce, manufactures and agriculture. This paradox was well adapted to the minds of believers in dreams.”
“The Gothic idea that we were to look backwards instead of forwards for the improvement of the human mind, and to recur to the annals of our ancestors for what is most perfect in government, in religion and in learning, is worthy of those bigots in religion and government by whom it has been recommended, and whose purposes it would answer. But it is not an idea which this country will endure.”
More on Violence
“I am the best-natured creature in the world, and yet I have already killed three, and of these three two were priests.”
“Revolutions are never peaceful.”
“The murder of a dozen innocent people is unquestionably a human tragedy. But that is no excuse for reacting blindly by preventing hundreds of thousands of other people from defending themselves against meeting the same fate.”
More on Fear
“Those who practice philosophy in the right way are in training for dying and they fear death least of all men.”
“One day I'm going to go up in a helicopter and it'll just blow up. MI5 will do away with me”
“Naturally, if the Americans had fired a shot, if the Seventh Fleet had done something more than sit there in the Bay of Bengal...yes, the Third World War would have exploded. But, in all honesty, not even that fear occurred to me.”