Top 100 Jefferson Thomas Quotes
#1. Karl stood up and pointed at the large portraits on the wall. He swept the room from George Washington to Ben Franklin to John Adams to Thomas Jefferson. "Soldier, Printer, Lawyer, Scholar. You become a politician because the people make you one, not because you desire to be one.
Jeff Ferry
#3. We confide in our strength, without boasting of it, we respect that of others, without fearing it.
Thomas Jefferson
#4. We've become slaves to words like 'local,' 'fresh,' and 'seasonal.' We all want to be Thomas Jefferson's agrarian hero, but sustainable food is a difficult beast.
Barton Seaver
#5. Quite naturally, the men who led in stirring up the revolt against Great Britain and in keeping the fighting temper of the Revolutionists at the proper heat were the boldest and most radical thinkers - men like Samuel Adams, Thomas Paine, Patrick Henry, and Thomas Jefferson.
Charles A. Beard
#6. No society has gone the way of gulags or concentration camps by following the path of Spinoza and Einstein and Jefferson and Thomas Paine
Christopher Hitchens
#7. Those who expect to be both ignorant and free, expect what never was and never will be.
Thomas Jefferson
#8. I like Thomas Jefferson, though he intimidated me. I thought he would have been very tough to be around. I don't know if he had such a sense of humor.
Maira Kalman
#9. God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever." (Thomas Jefferson)
John Price
#10. A quote from the American Thomas Jefferson. A government big enough to give you everything you want is strong enough to take everything you have.
Steve Berry
#11. Don't use your advance to buy an antique sports car, diamonds by the yard, or a bottle of wine from Thomas Jefferson's cellar instead of investing in your book.
M.J. Rose
#12. Look, in 1800 the sainted Thomas Jefferson arranged to hire a notorious slanderer named James Callender, who worked as a writer at a Republican newspaper in Richmond, Va. Read some of what he wrote about John Adams. This was a personal slander.
Karl Rove
#13. In the farsighted words of Thomas Jefferson, writing to his predecessor, John Adams, 'The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.
Richard Dawkins
#14. American history offers no parallel to the friendship between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, spanning the first half century of the Republic ... The publication, in full and integrated form, of the remarkable correspondence between these two eminent men is a notable event.
Dumas Malone
#15. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were political enemies, but they became fast friends. And when they passed away on the same day, the last words of one of them was, The country is safe. Jefferson still lives. And the last words of the other was, John Adams will see that things go forward.
Harry S. Truman
#16. Thomas Jefferson once said, 'We should never judge a president by his age, only by his works.' And ever since he told me that, I stopped worrying.
Ronald Reagan
#17. In spite of what Thomas Jefferson wrote, all men may be created equal, but not to all women.
Bill Cosby
#18. Those who surrender freedom for security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.
Benjamin Franklin
#19. They [Republicans] say, 'You're too conservative.' Was Thomas Jefferson too conservative? I'm tired of some people calling me wacky.
Sharron Angle
#20. The case for industry breakups comes from Thomas Jefferson's idea that occasional revolutions are important to the health of any system. As he wrote in 1787, a little rebellion every now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical one.
Tim Wu
#21. Thomas Jefferson High
School [..] His high school was named after a slave owner who was also one of
the world's greatest theoreticians on the subject of human liberty.
Kurt Vonnegut
#22. A religiously ambiguous Thomas Jefferson is not useful to the Christian right.
Matt McCook
#24. At noon, on the Fourth of July, 1826, while the Liberty Bell was again sounding its old message to the people of Philadelphia, the soul of Thomas Jefferson passed on; and a few hours later John Adams entered into rest, with the name of his old friend upon his lips.
Allen Johnson
#25. How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy!
Thomas Jefferson
#26. Life in cyberspace seems to be shaping up exactly like Thomas Jefferson would have wanted: founded on the primacy of individual liberty and a commitment to pluralism, diversity, and community.
Mitch Kapor
#27. As our enemies have found we can reason like men, so now let us show them we can fight like men also.1 - THOMAS JEFFERSON, July 5, 1775
Jon Meacham
#28. Democracy as a system has evolved into something that Thomas Jefferson didn't anticipate.
Hunter S. Thompson
#29. Thomas Jefferson said, The tree of liberty must be fertilized from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. Yeah and I heard that and thought, I'm out!
Christopher Titus
#30. Questioning our government's actions does not violate the principles of liberty, equality, and freedom of speech; it exercises them, and by exercise we grow stronger. I have read enough of Thomas Jefferson to feel sure
Barbara Kingsolver
#31. Thomas Jefferson creates the Marines for the Islamic pirates that were happening.
Glenn Beck
#32. The bridge between failure and success is hope. THOMAS JEFFERSON
Dave Ramsey
#33. The United States has already passed on as the world's economic leader. Having flouted Thomas Jefferson for too long, America has succumbed to public debt, the 'fore horse for oppression and despotism,' after which 'taxation will follow, and in its train wretchedness and oppression.
Ilana Mercer
#34. I knew Thomas Jefferson. He was a friend of mine. And believe me, you are no Thomas Jefferson. (at 1992 Republican party convention, referring to Bill Clinton)
Ronald Reagan
#35. Freedom has been privatized - it is how you dress, what your sexual orientation is, choosing your own life. That's fine. But that is not what Thomas Jefferson was talking about.
Eric Foner
#36. History of the United States in the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson,
Stephen E. Ambrose
#37. The boldness of his mind was sheathed in a scabbard of politeness.
Dumas Malone
#38. I think Thomas Jefferson would have said the more speech, the better.
Antonin Scalia
#40. Every White House has had its intellectuals, but very few presidents have been intellectuals themselves - Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Woodrow Wilson, the list more or less stops there.
Jonathan Raban
#41. People have always said - those words, 'too conservative,' is fairly relative. I'm sure that they probably said that about Thomas Jefferson and George Washington and Benjamin Franklin.
Sharron Angle
#42. [Thomas Jefferson] was occasionally troubled by the widespread indifference to marital vows among the rich [in France]. Domestic happiness, as Jefferson understood it, and had experienced it in America, was dismissed as a myth.
Thomas J. Fleming
#43. Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson hated each other so much. But that hate that they had for each other did not come before the love of their country.
David Scott
#44. There is no right to a job or a wage rate, but there is a right to move from one country to another in search of a better life. This is the point of view of Thomas Jefferson, John Locke and other great supporters of the natural rights tradition in America.
Alex Tabarrok
#45. Famous Quotes on: Honesty, Wisdom, Thomas Jefferson
Rich honesty dwells like a miser, sir, in a poor house; as your pearl in a foul oyster.
William Shakespeare
#46. The most famous and one of the most thoroughgoing opponents of bank credit was Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson reacted to the panic of 1819 as a confirmation of his pessimistic views on banks.
Murray Rothbard
#47. I would like Americans to make things with their hands. Thomas Jefferson and I feel that makes for a much stronger nation.
Nick Offerman
#48. In matters of style, swim with the current. In matters of principle, stand like a rock. - Thomas Jefferson
Merrick Rosenberg
#49. Didn't Gandalf say "With great power comes great responsibility"? (If it wasn't Gandalf, maybe it was Thomas Jefferson. Or Spider-Man's uncle.)
Tom Angleberger
#50. We Americans think, in every country in transition, there's a Thomas Jefferson hiding behind some rock or a James Madison beyond one sand dune.
Joe Biden
#51. Be good children, and we shall all meet in Heaven. I want to meet you all, white and black, in Heaven. Our Federal Union! It must be preserved! [Toast at a celebration of Thomas Jefferson's birthday, April 13 1830]
Andrew Jackson
#52. I believe that Thomas Jefferson said: 'If it neither breaks my leg nor picks my pocket, what difference is it to me?'
Glenn Beck
#54. Thomas Jefferson spoke of certain truths as self-evident. He did not say that these truths were self-explanatory or that they were self-operating.
J. Martin Klotsche
#55. Cherish therefore the spirit of our people, and keep alive their attention.1 Do not be too severe upon their errors, but reclaim them by enlightening them. - THOMAS JEFFERSON
Jon Meacham
#56. I agree with Thomas Jefferson, who once wrote that he would support the death penalty only when the infallibility of human judgment had been demonstrated.
Paul Jacob
#57. Probably the greatest concentration of talent and genius in this house except for perhaps those times when Thomas Jefferson ate alone.
John F. Kennedy
#58. Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.
H. Jackson Brown Jr.
#59. What's important is that you can be a wife and mother or you can be a devoted daughter all your life. You can't be both. Not when Thomas Jefferson is your father. You have to choose, Patsy. His
Stephanie Dray
#60. It is false to suggest that Thomas Jefferson or any other Founding Father believed in a legal barrier to God in the public square.
Newt Gingrich
#61. But if there's an erosion at home, you know, Thomas Jefferson warned about a tyranny of an oligarchy and if we surrender our democracy to the tyranny of an oligarchy, we've made a terrible mistake.
Pat Robertson
#62. Most Americans are unaware that Thomas Jefferson was the first American president to go to war against radical Islam. Jefferson was very concerned with Islam's war-like doctrine and its inability to separate mosque and state.
Brad Thor
#63. I'd been a housewife and mother to our son Thomas Jefferson, and I was looking for a new career. So when my agent called and said a producer named Paul Elliott from E&B productions, the biggest panto company in the country at the time, wanted to meet me I agreed.
Britt Ekland
#64. We know Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin as politicians, but they felt that science was something everyone should have a knowledge of.
Rush D. Holt Jr.
#65. If Thomas Jefferson had heard us, he probably would have said, 'We shouldn't have free speech.'
Robin Quivers
#66. It is easily and often overlooked that when Thomas Jefferson asserted that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness were inalienable human rights, he did so on the ground that they had been endowed by God, our Creator.
Tom Stoppard
#67. As Thomas Jefferson proclaimed, "In matters of fashion, swim with the current. In matters of conscience, stand like a rock.
John C. Maxwell
#68. Can a free government possibly exist with the Roman Catholic religion?
{Letter to Thomas Jefferson, May 19, 1821}
John Adams
#69. How I longed to see these things; how I longed to see the Liberty Bell and walk on the streets where Thomas Jefferson, Tom Paine and Benjamin Franklin had walked.
Burl Ives
#70. The most expensive bottle of wine ever sold - a 1787 Chateau Lafite Bordeaux, supposedly once the property of Thomas Jefferson ... It was sold at Christie's in London in 1985 for $156,000.00. Like a lot of high-priced art, the bottle is essentially undrinkable.
Robert Genn
#71. Thomas Jefferson declared, stating that he was speaking on behalf of the other founding fathers, ... (that) we should build a wall between the church and state.
Jimmy Carter
#72. So now it turns out that Thomas Jefferson was having sex with Sally Hemings while serving in the 101st Airborne during the Vietnam War.
Ann Coulter
#73. The priests of the different religious sects . . . dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight, and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subdivision of the duperies on which they live. - THOMAS JEFFERSON
Richard Dawkins
#74. A declaration of the independence of America, and the sovereignty of the United States was drawn by the ingenious and philosophic pen of Thomas Jefferson, Esquire, a delegate from the state of Virginia.
Mercy Otis Warren
#75. The evolution of national unity and equal rights is all about what America represents as a nation today: a manifestation of the historical episodes of Jefferson and Henry as well as the Civil War, the Women's Suffrage movement, and the Civil Rights struggles.
Patrick Mendis
#77. Few American presidents are held in higher esteem than Thomas Jefferson. Though historians have scrutinized every phase of his long public career and found him wanting in a number of respects, he holds an unshakable place in the pantheon of American heroes.
Robert Dallek
#78. Individual freedom and individual equality cannot co-exist. I dare say no one since Thomas Jefferson has really believed it.
Katharine Fullerton Gerould
#79. Sir, when the love of peace degenerates into fear of war, it becomes of all passions the most despicable." - Senator Giles of Virginia, to President Thomas Jefferson, before the War of 1812
Joe Buff
#80. In politics and in his personal life, Thomas Jefferson was a complicated man, but in one thing he was consistent: the wanted the best of everything, for himself and for his country.
Thomas J. Craughwell
#81. Thomas Jefferson taught that a democracy was impractical unless the people were educated.
Carl Sagan
#82. I suppose there's a melancholy tone at the back of the American mind, a sense of something lost. And it's the lost world of Thomas Jefferson. It is the lost sense of innocence that we could live with a very minimal state, with a vast sense of space in which to work out freedom.
George Will
#83. Were people to mingle only with those of like mind, every man would be an insulate being." Thomas Jefferson
John Ferling
#84. Jefferson appeared to his enemies as an American version of Candide; Hamilton as an American Machiavelli.
Joseph J. Ellis
#85. The idea of formulated 'rights ... comes not from John Locke and Thomas Jefferson ... but from the canon law of the Catholic Church.
Thomas E. Woods Jr.
#86. Americans could achieve Jefferson's democratic freedoms through Hamilton's economic development strategies and trade policies.
Patrick Mendis
#87. As Thomas Jefferson said, "Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed us, but is always the result of not finding one of your parents in a naked clench."That's not what he said? Well, he definitely should have
Laurel Ulen Curtis
#88. To achieve these Jeffersonian ends, Alexander Hamilton - Jefferson's philosophical rival - devised an ingenious strategy that entailed a strong manufacturing base, a national banking system, a centralized federal government, and an export-led economic scheme protected by the U.S. Navy.
Patrick Mendis
#89. Nobody is better than you and remember, you are better than nobody. Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
#90. that government is best which rules least," John Leland Baptist spokesman who knew Thomas Jefferson, circa 1760.
Robert G. Torbet
#91. The Petition of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Chapman Johnson, Joseph C. Cabell, James Breckenridge, John Hartwell Cocke, and Robert Taylor the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia ... Respectfully representeth ... That the value of science to a republican people, the security it ...
Thomas Jefferson
#92. If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union, or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated, where reason is left free to combat it.
[First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801]
Thomas Jefferson
#93. Was the government to prescribe us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are now. - Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
#94. After the Great Depression and after public urging, a nationwide public competition was held to determine a design for a memorial that would honor President Thomas Jefferson's bold vision for westward expansion for America.
Russ Carnahan
#95. God grant that men of principle shall be our principal men.
Thomas Jefferson
#96. Who would think it possible to redirect historical scholarship by explaining what Thomas Jefferson said in the Declaration of Independence?
Edmund Morgan
#97. As was said by Thomas Jefferson, "the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
William R. Forstchen
#98. Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed. which give happiness. Thomas Jefferson We never enjoy perfect happiness; our most fortunate successes are mingled with sadness; some anxieties always perplex the reality of our satisfaction.
William James
#99. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and John Marshall, all big men, and strong in every sense, deferred to him.
Mark David Ledbetter
#100. Adams lay peacefully, his mind clear, by all signs. Then late in the afternoon, according to several who were present in the room, he stirred and whispered clearly enough to be understood, Thomas Jefferson survives.
David McCullough
