You have lived longer than I have and perhaps may have formed a different judgment on better grounds; but my observations do not enable me to say I think integrity the characteristic of wealth. In general I believe the decisions of the people, in a body, will be more honest and more disinterested than those of wealthy men.
ATTRIBUTION:
Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), U.S. president. Letter, August 26, 1776, to Edmund Pendleton. The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 1, p. 504, ed. Julian P. Boyd, et al. (1950).
