Thomas Jefferson quote

[MarieInVa]

"Mad Tom" had many excellent quotes, but this has to be one of my favorites.

"A difference in opinion is not a difference in principle." 

[Victor08]

http://www.heritage.org/initiatives/first-principles/primary-sources/jeffersons-first-inaugural-address

Jefferson's First Inaugural Address

March 4, 1801
Introduction

Thomas Jefferson's First Inaugural address celebrated the most important election ever held in the history of the world. Jefferson believed that election was as consequential as the Declaration of Independence, for it marked the first time in modern history that a government surrendered its power via popular election. Ballots replaced bullets. The party voted out of office left voluntarily and was not persecuted. The address applies the principles of the American founding to the momentous occasion of a presidential election and interprets those principles in a sketch of the limited government political philosophy of the Democratic Republican Party.

Jefferson's speech marks the completion of one of the most dramatic periods in American history, the 1790s, when the threat of civil war arose over competing visions of the federal government. Jeffersonian "mobocrats" competed with Hamiltonian Federalist "monocrats," as each side castigated the other over the power of the federal government and the French Revolution. The Democratic Republican party would go on to be established as the world's oldest continuous political party, coming to be known as the Democrats. From Jefferson through Abraham Lincoln all but two elected presidents were Democrats.

Despite the bitterness of the campaign, Jefferson points to common underlying principles and a loyalty that transcends partisanship. "[E]very difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists." Whatever their differences, both parties are loyal to the same Constitution and its principles—though they may interpret and apply them somewhat differently.

[harryjack]

"A difference in opinion is not a difference in principle."

MarieInVa!  I must say you have shared an excellent quote here. I really like it and would like to mention, I have no idea that is this quote by Thomas Jefferson. But read little about the personality of Thomas Jefferson!!