Top 100 Thomas Jefferson Quotes
#1. I am never tempted to pray but when a warm feeling for my friends comes athwart my heart.
Thomas Jefferson
#2. Granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall,
Thomas Jefferson
#3. I advance it therefore [...] that the blacks [...] are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind.
Thomas Jefferson
#4. It is better to tolerate the rare instance of a parent refusing to let his child be educated, than to shock the common feelings and ideas by forcible asportation and education of the infant against the will of the father.
Thomas Jefferson
#5. The government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers.
Thomas Jefferson
#6. Of distinction by birth or badge, [Americans] had no more idea than they had of the mode of existence in the moon or planets. They had heard only that there were such, and knew that they must be wrong.
Thomas Jefferson
#7. He who is permitted by law to have no property of his own, can with difficulty conceive that property is founded in anything but force.
Thomas Jefferson
#8. I may grow rich by an art I am compelled to follow; I may recover health by medicines I am compelled to take against my own judgment; but I cannot be saved by a worship I disbelieve and abhor.
Thomas Jefferson
#9. Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends [life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness] it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government ...
Thomas Jefferson
#10. There is no habit you will value so much as that of walking far without fatigue.
Thomas Jefferson
#12. I will not believe our labors are lost. I shall not die without a hope that light and liberty are on a steady advance.
Thomas Jefferson
#13. Those who expect to be both ignorant and free, expect what never was and never will be.
Thomas Jefferson
#14. The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.
Thomas Jefferson
#15. We exist, and are quoted, as standing proofs that a government, so modeled as to rest continually on the will of the whole society, is a practicable government.
Thomas Jefferson
#16. The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind.
Thomas Jefferson
#17. Music, drawing, books, invention & exercise will be so many resources to you against ennui.
Thomas Jefferson
#20. All things here appear to me to trudge on in one and the same round: we rise in the morning that we may eat breakfast, dinner andsupper and to bed again that we may get up the next morning and do the same: so that you never saw two peas more alike than our yesterday and to-day.
Thomas Jefferson
#21. An informed citizenry is the only true repository of the public will.
Thomas Jefferson
#22. Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion.
Thomas Jefferson
#23. I am a real Christian, that is to say, a cisciple of the doctrines of Jesus. I have little doubt that our whole country will soon be rallied to the unity of our Creator.
Thomas Jefferson
#24. Let us in education dream of an aristocracy of achievement arising out of a democracy of opportunity
Thomas Jefferson
#25. When a uniform exercise of kindness to prisoners on our part has been returned by as uniform severity on the part of our enemies,you must excuse me for saying it is high time, by other lessons, to teach respect to the dictates of humanity; in such a case, retaliation becomes an act of benevolence.
Thomas Jefferson
#26. Convinced that the people are the only safe depositories of their own liberty, and that they are not safe unless enlightened to a certain degree, I have looked on our present state of liberty as a short-lived possession unless the mass of the people could be informed to a certain degree.
Thomas Jefferson
#28. I deplore with you the putrid state into which our newspapers have passed, and the malignity, the vulgarity, and mendacious spirit of those who write for them ... This has in a great degree been produced by the violence and malignity of party spirit.
Thomas Jefferson
#29. I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government; I mean an additional article taking from the Federal Government the power of borrowing.
Thomas Jefferson
#31. Not less than two hours a day should be devoted to exercise.
Thomas Jefferson
#32. The further the departure from direct and constant control by the citizens, the less has the government of the ingredient of republicanism ...
Thomas Jefferson
#33. Trade liberty for safety or money and you'll end up with neither. Liberty, like a grain of salt, easily dissolves. The power of questioning - not simply believing - has no friends. Yet liberty depends on it.
Thomas Jefferson
#34. Subject opinion to coercion: whom will you make your inquisitors? Fallible men; men governed by bad passions, by private as well as public reasons. And why subject it to coercion? To produce uniformity. But is uniformity of opinion desirable? No more than of face and stature.
Thomas Jefferson
#35. The religion-builders have so distorted and deformed the doctrines of Jesus, so muffled them in mysticism, fancies, and falsehoods.
Thomas Jefferson
#36. By ... [selecting] the youths of genius from among the classes of the poor, we hope to avail the State of those talents which nature has sown as liberally among the poor as the rich, but which perish without use if not sought for and cultivated.
Thomas Jefferson
#37. When the people fear the government there is tyranny, when the government fears the people there is liberty.
Thomas Jefferson
#38. Now I will avow, that I then believed and now believe that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God; and that those principles of liberty are as unalterable as human nature and our terrestrial, mundane system.
Thomas Jefferson
#39. The equal rights of man, and the happiness of every individual, are now acknowledged to be the only legitimate objects of government.
Thomas Jefferson
#40. The selfish spirit of commerce, which knows no country, and feels no passion or principle but that of gain.
Thomas Jefferson
#41. I leave the world and its affairs to the young and energetic, and resign myself to their care, of whom I have endeavored to take care when young.
Thomas Jefferson
#42. I do not believe war the most certain means of enforcing principles. Those peaceable coercions which are in the power of every nation, if undertaken in concert and in time of peace, are more likely to produce the desired effect.
Thomas Jefferson
#43. I can scarcely contemplate a more incalculable evil than the breaking of the Union into two or more parts.
Thomas Jefferson
#44. With respect to the distribution of your time the following is what I should approve. from 8. to 10 o'clock practise music. from 10. to 1. dance one day & draw another. from 1. to 2. draw on the day you dance, and write a letter next day. from 3. to 4. read French. from 4. to 5. exercise ...
Thomas Jefferson
#45. Hemp is one of the greatest, most important substances of our nation
Thomas Jefferson
#46. If the happiness of the mass of mankind can be secured at the expense of a little tempest now and then, or even of a little blood, it will be a precious purchase.
Thomas Jefferson
#47. We are now vibrating between too much and too little government, and the pendulum will rest finally in the middle.
Thomas Jefferson
#48. If we can but prevent the government from wasting the labours of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy.
Thomas Jefferson
#49. Idleness begets ennui, ennui the hypochondriac, and that a diseased body. No laborious person was ever yet hysterical.
Thomas Jefferson
#50. If I had to choose between government without newspapers, and newspapers without government, I wouldn't hesitate to choose the latter
Thomas Jefferson
#51. Bodily decay is gloomy in prospect, but of all human contemplations the most abhorrent is body without mind.
Thomas Jefferson
#52. If the book be false in its facts, disprove them; if false in its reasoning, refute it. But, for God's sake, let us freely hear both sides, if we choose.
Thomas Jefferson
#54. I haven't failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that don't work.
Thomas Jefferson
#55. The flames kindled on the Fourth of July, 1776, have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism; on the contrary, they will consume these engines and all who work them.
Thomas Jefferson
#56. Even in Europe a change has sensibly taken place in the mind of man. Science has liberated the ideas of those who read and reflect, and the American example has kindled feelings of right in the people.
Thomas Jefferson
#58. Knowledge is power ... knowled ge is safety ... knowle dge is happiness.
Thomas Jefferson
#60. There is preparing, I hope, under the auspices of heaven, a way for a total emancipation.
Thomas Jefferson
#61. If you have to eat crow, eat it while it's young and tender.
Thomas Jefferson
#62. The pretense that the workings of the mind, like the actions of the body, are subject to the control of laws, does not seem sufficiently demolished ... The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others.
Thomas Jefferson
#63. I sincerely wish you may find it convenient to come here. the pleasure of the trip will be less than you expect, but the utility greater. it will make you adore your own country, it's soil, it's climate, it's equality, liberty, laws, people & manners. my god! how little do my countrymen know ...
Thomas Jefferson
#64. Scenes are now to take place as will open the eyes of credulity and of insanity itself, to the dangers of a paper medium abandoned to the discretion of avarice and of swindlers.
Thomas Jefferson
#65. Trial by jury is part of the bright constellation which leads to peace, liberty and safety.
Thomas Jefferson
#66. Good humor is one of the preservatives of our peace and tranquility
Thomas Jefferson
#67. Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred
Thomas Jefferson
#68. I value peace, and I should unwillingly see any event take place which would render war a necessary resource.
Thomas Jefferson
#69. All the States but our own are sensible that knowlege is power.
Thomas Jefferson
#70. I agree with you that it is the duty of every good citizen to use all the opportunities, which occur to him, for preserving documents relating to the history of our country.
Thomas Jefferson
#71. No society can make a perpetual constitution ... The earth belongs always to the living generation.
Thomas Jefferson
#72. [T]he opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves, in their, own sphere of action, but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch.
Thomas Jefferson
#73. I think one travels more usefully when they travel alone, because they reflect more.
(Letter to John Banister, Jr., June 19, 1787)
Thomas Jefferson
#74. The order of nature [is] that individual happiness shall be inseparable from the practice of virtue.
Thomas Jefferson
#75. The most effective way to find ourselves enslaved will not be done openly. If weakened we will sink gradually. I ask, who are the militia? They consist of the whole people, ... except a few public officers.
Thomas Jefferson
#76. I learn with great concern that [one] portion of our frontier so interesting, so important, and so exposed, should be so entirely unprovided with common fire-arms. I did not suppose any part of the United States so destitute of what is considered as among the first necessaries of a farm-house.
Thomas Jefferson
#77. It is neither wealth nor splendor, but tranquility and occupation which give happiness.
Thomas Jefferson
#78. It is more honorable to repair a wrong than to persist in it.
Thomas Jefferson
#79. I believe that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another.
Thomas Jefferson
#80. I shall need, too, the favor of that Being in whose hands we are, who led our forefathers, as Israel of old.
Thomas Jefferson
#81. Walking is the best possible exercise. Habituate yourself to walk very far.
Thomas Jefferson
#82. A truth now and then projecting into the ocean of newspaper lies serves like headlands to correct our course. Indeed, my scepticism as to everything I see in a newspaper makes me indifferent whether I ever see one.
Thomas Jefferson
#83. Certain teachings in the Bible are as diamonds in a dung-heap.
Thomas Jefferson
#85. Chemistry is yet, indeed, a mere embryon. Its principles are contested; experiments seem contradictory; their subjects are so minute as to escape our senses; and their result too fallacious to satisfy the mind. It is probably an age too soon to propose the establishment of a system.
Thomas Jefferson
#86. The human character, we believe, requires in general constant and immediate control to prevent its being biased from right by the seductions of self-love.
Thomas Jefferson
#87. War has been avoided from a due sense of the miseries, and the demoralization it produces, and of the superior blessings of a state of peace and friendship with all mankind.
Thomas Jefferson
#88. I was dupedby the Secretary of the treasury [Alexander Hamilton], and made a fool for forwarding his schemes, not then sufficiently understood by me; and of all the errors of my political life, this has occasioned the deepest regret.
Thomas Jefferson
#89. The second office in the government is honorable and easy; the first is but a splendid misery.
Thomas Jefferson
#90. I deny the power of the general government to making paper money, or anything else a legal tender.
Thomas Jefferson
#93. With nations as with individuals our interests soundly calculated will ever be found inseparable from our moral duties.
Thomas Jefferson
#94. It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more completely deprive the nation of its benefits than is done by its abandoned prostitution to falsehood.
Thomas Jefferson
#95. Every experience deeply felt in life needs to be passed along. Wheather it be through words and music, chiseled in stone, painted with a brush, or sewn with a needle, it is a way of reaching for immortality.
Thomas Jefferson
#96. [Christianity is] the most ... perverted system that ever shone on man.
Thomas Jefferson
#97. Nothing but a necessity invincible by any other means can justify ... a prostitution of laws, which constitute the pillars of our whole system of jurisprudence.
Thomas Jefferson
#98. The most uninformed mind with a healthy body is happier than the wisest valetudinarian.
Thomas Jefferson
#99. I suppose, indeed, that in public life, a man whose political principles have any decided character and who has energy enough to give them effect must always expect to encounter political hostility from those of adverse principles.
Thomas Jefferson
#100. [A]lthough a republican government is slow to move, yet when once in motion, its momentum becomes irresistible.
Thomas Jefferson
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
