“I am satisfied, and sufficiently occupied with the things which are, without tormenting or troubling myself about those which may indeed be, but of which I have no evidence.”
– Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1820
...[T]o give rest to my mind, I was obliged to recur ultimately to my habitual anodyne:
"I feel: therefore I exist." I feel bodies which are not myself: there are other existencies then. I call them matter. I feel them changing place. This gives me motion. Where there is an absence of matter, I call it void, or nothing, or immaterial space. On the basis of sensation, of matter and motion, we may erect the fabric of all the certainties we can have or need.
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To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise.
- Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Adams, August 15, 1820
The doctrines which flowed from the lips of Jesus himself are within the comprehension of a child; but thousands of volumes have not yet explained the Platonism's engrafted on them; and for this obvious reason, that nonsense can never be explained.
- Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Adams, July 5, 1814
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The purpose of this website is to promote the study of the philosophy of Epicurus.
Epicurus held that it is impossible to live a happy life without living wisely, honestly, and justly.
He also held that in order to live wisely, one must devote oneself regularly to the study of the true Nature of Things.
Epicurus held that the knowledge such study brings is the only antidote to the irrational fears and errors into which men are otherwise prone to falling.
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