Category: Thought

“Was the government to prescribe to us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are now.”

Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (1781-83)

“As to the species of exercise, I advise the gun. While this gives a moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise, and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body, and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be the constant companion of your walks. Never think of taking a book with you.”

Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to his nephew Peter Carr (August 19, 1785)

A DECALOGUE OF CANONS FOR OBSERVATION IN PRACTICAL LIFE

Never put off till to-morrow what you can do to-day.

Never trouble another for what you can do yourself.

Never spend your money before you have it.

Never buy what you do not want, because it is cheap; it will be dear to you.

Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst, and cold.

We never repent of having eaten too little.

Nothing is troublesome that we do willingly.

How much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened.

Take things always by their smooth handle.

When angry, count ten, before you speak; if very angry, a hundred.

Thomas Jefferson, in Henry S. Randall, ‪The Life of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 3 (1858)‬

“Instead of seeing these children for the blessings that they are, we are measuring them only by the standard of whether they will be future deficits or assets for our nation’s competitive needs.”

Jonathan Kozol

“The final test of truth is ridicule. Very few dogmas have ever faced it and survived.”

H. L. Mencken, Damn! A Book of Calumny (1918)

“Wonderful teachers should never let themselves be drill sergeants for the state.”

Jonathan Kozol, as quoted in Reading, writing, and rebellion, by Tracy Jan, Boston Globe, September 21, 2007.

“Truth would quickly cease to be stranger than fiction, once we got as used to it.”

H. L. Mencken, A Little Book in C Major (1916)

Our constitution protects aliens, drunks, and U. S. Senators. There ought to be one day (just one) when there is open season on senators.

Will Rogers, Daily Telegram number 2678 (March 6, 1935).

“If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.”

Virginia Woolf, The Leaning Tower (May 1940)

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

H. L. Mencken, Women as Outlaws, The Smart Set (December 1921)