We stand in the shadow of Jefferson who believed that a society founded upon the rule of law and liberty was dependent upon public education and the diffusion of knowledge.

But if there's an erosion at home you know Thomas Jefferson warned about a tyranny of an oligarchy and if we surrender our democracy to the tyranny of an oligarchy we've made a terrible mistake.

From Jefferson to Jackson to Lincoln to FDR to Reagan every great president inspires enormous affection and enormous hostility. We'll all be much saner I think if we remember that history is full of surprises and things that seemed absolutely certain one day are often unimaginable the next.

If you seek Hamilton's monument look around. You are living in it. We honor Jefferson but live in Hamilton's country a mighty industrial nation with a strong central government.

The thought about Republicans is we're supposed to be Jeffersonian. That government governs the best that governs the least.

I suppose there's a melancholy tone at the back of the American mind a sense of something lost. And it's the lost world of Thomas Jefferson. It is the lost sense of innocence that we could live with a very minimal state with a vast sense of space in which to work out freedom.

Men of Virginia countrymen of Washington of Patrick Henry of Jefferson and of Madison will ye be true to your constitutional faith?

In America everybody is of the opinion that he has no social superiors since all men are equal but he does not admit that he has no social inferiors for from the time of Jefferson onward the doctrine that all men are equal applies only upwards not downwards.

I couldn't help but to think back to my classmates at Thomas Jefferson High School in San Antonio. They had the same talent the same brains the same dreams as the folks we sat with at Stanford and Harvard. I realized the difference wasn't one of intelligence or drive. The difference was opportunity.

After the Great Depression and after public urging a nationwide public competition was held to determine a design for a memorial that would honor President Thomas Jefferson's bold vision for westward expansion for America.

Washington not Jefferson freed his slaves upon his death.

I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent of human knowledge that has ever been gathered at the White House - with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.

Thomas Jefferson once said 'We should never judge a president by his age only by his works.' And ever since he told me that I stopped worrying.