“The two principles on which our conduct towards the Indians should be founded, are justice and fear. After the injuries we have done them, they cannot love us….”

—  Thomas Jefferson

Letter to Benjamin Hawkins (13 August 1786) Lipscomb & Bergh ed. 5:390
1780s

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The two principles on which our conduct towards the Indians should be founded, are justice and fear. After the injuries…" by Thomas Jefferson?
Thomas Jefferson photo
Thomas Jefferson456
3rd President of the United States of America 1743–1826

Related quotes

Clement Attlee photo

“It is one of the great achievements of our rule in India that, even if they do not entirely carry them out, educated Indians do accept British principles of justice and liberty. We are condemned by Indians not by the measures of Indian ethical conceptions but by our own, which we have taught them to accept. It is precisely this acceptance by politically conscious Indians of the principles of democracy and liberty which puts us in the position of being able to appeal to them to take part with us in the common struggle; but the success of this appeal and India's response does put upon us the obligation of seeing that we, as far as we may, make them sharers in the things for which we and they are fighting.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Letter to the Cabinet (January 1942), quoted in Paul Addison, The Road to 1945 (London: Pimlico, 1994), pp. 202-203
1940s

Anne-Thérèse de Marguenat de Courcelles, marquise de Lambert photo

“It is not always our faults that ruin us, but the manner of our conduct after we have committed them.”

Anne-Thérèse de Marguenat de Courcelles, marquise de Lambert (1647–1733) writer from France

Source: A Mother's Advice to Her Daughter, 1728, p. 200

“At first, when we truly love someone, our greatest fear is that the loved one will stop loving us. What we should fear and dread, of course, is that we won't stop loving them, even after they're dead and gone.”

Gregory David Roberts book Shantaram

Source: Shantaram

Mahatma Gandhi photo

“We are our own slaves, not of the British. This should be engraved on our minds. The whites cannot remain if we do not want them. If the idea is to drive them out with firearms, let every Indian consider what precious little profit Europe has found in these.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

Introduction to the publication of Tolstoy's A Letter to a Hindu, Indian opinion, 25 December, (1909)
1900s

Niccolo Machiavelli photo

“If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared.”

Niccolo Machiavelli book The Prince

Source: The Prince

Joni Madraiwiwi photo

“We have survived bitter divisions in our society. Reconciliation requires us to put aside our differences and forgive the injuries done to us just as justice is essential to that equation. Those who have done wrong and broken the law must be punished. There can be no setting to rights or settling of accounts without that element. Until that is done there will be no finality to our collective nightmare. Until we all accept that simple fact the sense of hurt and betrayal continue.”

Joni Madraiwiwi (1957–2016) Fijian politician

Our Country at the Crossroads - 2001 Parkinson Memorial Lecture Series, 15 August 2001 http://www.usp.ac.fj/journ/docs/news/wansolnews/wansol1508013.html.

Georg Simmel photo

“In the presence of the total reality upon which our conduct is founded, our knowledge is characterized by peculiar limitations and aberrations. We cannot say in principle that "error is life and knowledge is death," because a being involved in persistent errors would continually act wide of the purpose, and would thus inevitably perish.”

Georg Simmel (1858–1918) German sociologist, philosopher, and critic

Source: The Sociology of Secrecy and of Secret Societies (1906), p. 444

Sir Charles Trevelyan, 1st Baronet photo

“The Indians will, I hope, soon stand in the same position towards us in which we once stood towards the Romans.”

Sir Charles Trevelyan, 1st Baronet (1807–1886) colonial administrator and historian

Muhammad Ali Jinnah photo

“We should have a State in which we could live and breathe as free men and which we could develop according to our own lights and culture and where principles of Islamic social justice could find free play.”

Muhammad Ali Jinnah (1876–1948) Founder and 1st Governor General of Pakistan

Address to Civil, Naval, Military and Air Force Officers of Pakistan Government, Karachi (11 October 1947)

Related topics