Thomas Jefferson Agriculture Quotations

All the capital employed in paper speculation is barren and useless, producing, like that on a gaming table, no accession to itself, and is withdrawn from commerce and agriculture where it would have produced addition to the common mass It nourishes in our citizens habits of vice and idleness instead of industry and morality It has furnished effectual means of corrupting such a portion of the legislature as turns the balance between the honest voters whichever way it is directed.

Agriculture is at the same time the most tranquil, healthy, and independent occupation.

Agriculture is our wisest pursuit, because it will in the end contribute most to real wealth, good morals, and happiness.

Agriculture, manufactures, commerce, and navigation, the four pillars of our prosperity, are the most thriving when left most free to individual enterprise.

From breakfast, or noon at the latest, to dinner, I am mostly on horseback, Attending to My Farm or other concerns, which I find healthful to my body, mind, and affairs.

Let the farmer forevermore be honored in his calling; for they who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God.

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.

One imputation in particular has been repeated till it seems as if some at least believed it: that I am an enemy to commerce. They admit me a friend of agriculture, and suppose me an enemy to the only means of disposing of its produce.