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  • From: Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>
  • To: "homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org" <homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [Homestead] Happy Birthday, T.J.
  • Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 08:53:28 -0700

It would be a stretch to call Thomas Jefferson a homesteader. Nonetheless, he embodied many of the characteristics of same. T.J. was an independently-minded agriculturist who, with substantial slave help, grew most of his household's food needs on his own land. He collected and experimented with plants from many places. The gardens at Monticello are today visited by thousands yearly. They include fruits, vegetables and ornamentals large in number. His mind was magnificent. Here are a few of his quotes:

"Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies."

"Determine never to be idle. . . It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing."

"Do not bite at the bait of pleasure till you know there is no hook beneath it."

"Enlighten the people, generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like spirits at the dawn of day."

"Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state."

"I cannot live without books."

"I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it."

"I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it."

"In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock."

"Never spend your money before you have it." [Do as he advises, not as he lived; he had a lifelong problem with following his own advice on this one.]

"Never trouble another for what you can do for yourself."






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