Thomas Jefferson Quotes
Read the best of Thomas Jefferson quotes. Famous Quotes by Thomas Jefferson.
Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.
I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale. – Check Out Our Awesome Collection Of Banker Jokes –
I predict future happiness for Americans, if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.
For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their best security.
Do you want to know who you are? Don’t ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.
But friendship is precious, not only in the shade but in the sunshine of life; & thanks to a benevolent arrangement of things, the greater part of life is sunshine. I will recur for proof to the days we have lately passed. On these indeed the sun shone brightly. – Check Out Our Awesome Collection Of Funny Friendship Quotes –
The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.
The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.
The equal rights of man, and the happiness of every individual, are now acknowledged to be the only legitimate objects of government. Thomas Jefferson Quotes from Letters of Thomas Jefferson
Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time, who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done, if we are always doing.
Honesty is the first chapter of the book wisdom.
Do you want to know who you are? Don’t ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.
I had rather be shut up in a very modest cottage with my books, my family and a few old friends, dining on simple bacon, and letting the world roll on as it liked, than to occupy the most splendid post, which any human power can give.
Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.
Continue reading these famous Thomas Jefferson quotes on religion
It is in our lives and not our words that our religion must be read.
I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.
Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions any more than our opinions in physics or geometry. – Check Out Our Awesome Collection Of Funny Religious Jokes
I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.
It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God.
The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time.
Never spend your money before you have earned it. – Check Out More Funny Money Quotes – You Will Love ‘Em
The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave.
The advertisement is the most truthful part of a newspaper.
Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto.
Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.
Nothing is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man.
I believe that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another.
Only aim to do your duty, and mankind will give you credit where you fail.
Walking is the best possible exercise. Habituate yourself to walk very far.
Truth is certainly a branch of morality and a very important one to society.
I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.
Continue reading these Thomas Jefferson quotes on government
History, in general, only informs us of what bad government is.
We in America do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate.
The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. Unsuccesful rebellions indeed generally establish the incroachments on the rights of the people which have produced them. An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions, as not to discourage them too much. It is a medecine necessary for the sound health of government. Thomas Jefferson quotes on government from Letters of Thomas Jefferson
If we can but prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretense of taking care of them, they must become happy.
Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.
Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.
A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.
It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.
I own that I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.
Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.
Whenever you do a thing, act as if all the world were watching.
The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. … What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.
The glow of one warm thought is to me worth more than money. – Check Out More Funny Money Quotes –
Some are whigs, liberals, democrats, call them what you please. Others are tories, serviles, aristocrats, &c. The latter fear the people, and wish to transfer all power to the higher classes of society; the former consider the
people as the safest depository of power in the last resort; they cherish them therefore, and wish to leave in them all the powers to the exercise of which they are competent.
I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.
I’m a greater believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.
Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed us, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits.
Continue reading these famous Thomas Jefferson quotes on education
Educate and inform the whole mass of the people. Enable them to see that it is their interest to preserve peace and order, and they will preserve them. And it requires no very high degree of education to convince them of this. They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.
To penetrate and dissipate these clouds of darkness, the general mind must be strengthened by education.
Delay is preferable to error.
One man with courage is a majority.
Be polite to all, but intimate with few.
He who knows best knows how little he knows.
No freeman shall be debarred the use of arms.
Thomas Jefferson’s Decalogue of Canons for Observation in Practical Life:
1. Never put off to tomorrow what you can do to-day.
2. Never trouble another with what you can do yourself.
3. Never spend your money before you have it.
4. Never buy a thing you do not want, because it is cheap, it will be dear to you.
5. Take care of your cents: Dollars will take care of themselves.
6. Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst and cold.
7. We never repent of having eat too little.
8. Nothing is troublesome that one does willingly.
9. How much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened.
10. Take things always by their smooth handle.
11. Think as you please, and so let others, and you will have no disputes.
12. When angry, count 10. before you speak; if very angry, 100.
Thomas Jefferson Quotes from Letters of Thomas Jefferson
I have seen enough of one war never to wish to see another.
A coward is much more exposed to quarrels than a man of spirit.
Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.
Don’t talk about what you have done or what you are going to do.
Do not bite at the bait of pleasure, till you know there is no hook beneath it.
Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct.
No man will ever carry out of the Presidency the reputation which carried him into it.
Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none.
I think with the Romans, that the general of today should be a soldier tomorrow if necessary.
No duty the Executive had to perform was so trying as to put the right man in the right place.
I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.
The good opinion of mankind, like the lever of Archimedes, with the given fulcrum, moves the world.
He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.
As our enemies have found we can reason like men, so now let us show them we can fight like men also.
When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe.
It is always better to have no ideas than false ones; to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong.
I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be.
To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.
No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of the garden.
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.
Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state.
I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master.
I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.
Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppression of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.
Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.
It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.
The constitutions of most of our States assert that all power is inherent in the people; that… it is their right and duty to be at all times armed.
Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor.
Leave all the afternoon for exercise and recreation, which are as necessary as reading. I will rather say more necessary because health is worth more than learning.
I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led, and bearding every authority which stood in their way.
An association of men who will not quarrel with one another is a thing which has never yet existed, from the greatest confederacy of nations down to a town meeting or a vestry.
It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.
Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence.
If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour?
In defense of our persons and properties under actual violation, we took up arms. When that violence shall be removed, when hostilities shall cease on the part of the aggressors, hostilities shall cease on our part also.
The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate
it.
Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.
Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.
I am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greek and Roman leave to us.
So confident am I in the intentions, as well as wisdom, of the government, that I shall always be satisfied that what is not done, either cannot, or ought not to be done.
Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.
A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be your constant companion of your walks.
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