Top 100 Quotes About Thomas Jefferson
#1. I am never tempted to pray but when a warm feeling for my friends comes athwart my heart.
Thomas Jefferson
#2. Where thought is free in its range, we need never fear to hazard what is good in itself.
Thomas Jefferson
#3. Religious leaders will always avail themselves of public ignorance for their own purpose.
Thomas Jefferson
#4. With all the defects in our Constitution, whether general or particular, the comparison of our government with those of Europe, is like a comparison of Heaven with Hell. England, like the earth, may be allowed to take the intermediate station.
Thomas Jefferson
#5. Laws ... proportionate and mild should never be dispensed with. Let mercy be the character of the law-giver, but let the judge be a mere machine.
Thomas Jefferson
#6. But a short time elapsed after the death of the great reformer of the Jewish religion, before his principles were departed from by those who professed to be his special servants, and perverted into an engine for enslaving mankind, and aggrandizing their oppressors in Church and State.
Thomas Jefferson
#7. The rights of the people to the exercise and fruits of their own industry can never be protected against the selfishness of rulers not subject to their control at short periods.
Thomas Jefferson
#8. Paper is poverty, it is only the ghost of money, and not money itself.
Thomas Jefferson
#9. Granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall,
Thomas Jefferson
#11. I am already sensible of decay in the power of walking, and find my memory not so faithful as it used to be. This may be partly owing to the incessant current of new matter flowing constantly through it; but I ascribe to years their share in it also.
Thomas Jefferson
#12. With your talents and industry, with science, and that steadfast honesty, which eternally pursues right, regardless of consequences, you may promise yourself everything but health, without which there is no happiness.
Thomas Jefferson
#13. I have lived temperately, eating little animal food, and that not as an aliment, so much as a condiment for the vegetables, which constitute my principal diet.
Thomas Jefferson
#14. I advance it therefore [...] that the blacks [...] are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind.
Thomas Jefferson
#15. Knowing that religion does not furnish grosser bigots than law, I expect little from old judges.
Thomas Jefferson
#16. I have ever deemed it more honorable and more profitable, too, to set a good example than to follow a bad one.
Thomas Jefferson
#17. 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
#18. I think with the Romans, that the general of today should be a soldier tomorrow if necessary.
Thomas Jefferson
#19. An hereditary aristocracy ... will change the form of our governments from the best to the worst in the world.
Thomas Jefferson
#20. The sovereign invigorator of the body is exercise, and of all the exercises walking is the best.
Thomas Jefferson
#21. 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
#22. Industry, commerce and security are the surest roads to the happiness and prosperity of people.
Thomas Jefferson
#23. I have but one system of ethics for men and for nations - to be grateful, to be faithful to all engagements under all circumstances, to be open and generous, promoting in the long run even the interests of both
Thomas Jefferson
#24. Of all machines, the human heart is the most complicated and inexplicable.
Thomas Jefferson
#25. One precedent in favor of power is stronger than a hundred against it.
Thomas Jefferson
#27. The happiness of the domestic fireside is the first boon of Heaven; and it is well it is so, since it is that which is the lot of the mass of mankind.
Thomas Jefferson
#28. The happiest moments my heart knows are those in which it is pouring forth its affections to a few esteemed characters.
Thomas Jefferson
#29. I have seen enough of one war never to wish to see another.
Thomas Jefferson
#30. 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
#31. 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
#33. 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
#34. It was one of the rules which above all others made Doctr. Franklin the most amiable of men in society, never to contradict anybody.
Thomas Jefferson
#35. The press is the best instrument for enlightening the mind of man, and improving him as a rational, moral and social being
Thomas Jefferson
#36. I advance it therefore as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments of both body and mind.
Thomas Jefferson
#37. We are not immortal ourselves, my friend; how can we expect our enjoyments to be so? We have no rose without its thorn; no pleasure without alloy. It is the law of our existence; and we must acquiesce.
Thomas Jefferson
#39. Having always observed that public works are much less advantageously managed than the same are by private hands, I have thought it better for the public to go to market for whatever it wants which is to be found there; for there competition brings it down to the minimum value.
Thomas Jefferson
#41. 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
#42. Government as well as religion has furnished its schisms, its persecutions and its devices for fattening idleness on the earnings of the people.
Thomas Jefferson
#44. Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy, and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it.
Thomas Jefferson
#46. By oft repeating an untruth, men come to believe it themselves.
Thomas Jefferson
#47. A good cause is often injured more by ill-timed efforts of its friends than by the arguments of its enemies. Persuasion, perseverance and patience are the best advocates on questions depending on the will of others.
Thomas Jefferson
#48. It is not by the consolidation or concentration of powers but by their distribution that good government is effected.
Thomas Jefferson
#50. I tolerate with the utmost latitude the right of others to differ from me in opinion without imputing to them criminality.
Thomas Jefferson
#51. The colleges of Edinburgh and Geneva as seminaries of science, are considered as the two eyes of Europe. While Great Britain and America give the preference to the former, all other countries give it to the latter.
Thomas Jefferson
#52. 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.
Thomas Jefferson
#53. My principles, and those always received by the republicans, do not admit to removing any person from office merely for a difference of political opinion. Malversations in office, and the exerting of official influence to control the freedom of election are good causes for removal.
Thomas Jefferson
#54. The wise know too well their weakness to assume infallibility; and he who knows most knows best how little he knows.
Thomas Jefferson
#55. It would not be for the public good to have [a majority in Congress of one party] greater [than] two to one.
Thomas Jefferson
#56. 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
#57. Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of Liberty.
Thomas Jefferson
#58. The purse of the people is the real seat of sensibility. Let it be drawn upon largely, and they will then listen to truths which could not excite them through any other organ.
Thomas Jefferson
#60. Truth is certainly a branch of morality and a very important one to society.
Thomas Jefferson
#61. Men are disposed to live honestly, if the means of doing so are open to them.
Thomas Jefferson
#62. A great deal of love given to a few is better than a little to many.
Thomas Jefferson
#63. I have great confidence in the common sense of mankind in general.
Thomas Jefferson
#64. In 1800, in the first interparty contest, the Federalists warned that presidential candidate Thomas Jefferson, because of his sympathy expressed at the outset of the French Revolution, was 'the son of a half-breed Indian squaw' who would put opponents under the guillotine.
Robert Dallek
#65. A nation, as a society, forms a moral person, and every member of it is personally responsible for his society.
Thomas Jefferson
#66. If your letters are as long as the bible, they will appear short to me. Only let them be brim full of affection.
Thomas Jefferson
#67. [T]he States can best govern our home concerns and the general government our foreign ones. I wish, therefore ... never to see all offices transferred to Washington, where, further withdrawn from the eyes of the people, they may more secretly be bought and sold at market.
Thomas Jefferson
#68. Only aim to do your duty, and mankind will give you credit where you fail.
Thomas Jefferson
#69. Newspapers ... serve as chimnies to carry off noxious vapors and smoke.
Thomas Jefferson
#70. To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.
Thomas Jefferson
#71. A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.
Thomas Jefferson
#72. What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.
Thomas Jefferson
#73. We confide in our strength, without boasting of it, we respect that of others, without fearing it.
Thomas Jefferson
#74. Perceiving the order of nature to be that individual happiness shall be inseparable from the practice of virtue, I am willing to hope it may have ordained that the fall of the wicked shall be the rise of the good.
To J. Correa de Serra, Monticello, Apr. 19, 1814
Thomas Jefferson
#75. Natural rights [are] the objects for the protection of which society is formed and municipal laws established.
Thomas Jefferson
#76. There is no habit you will value so much as that of walking far without fatigue.
Thomas Jefferson
#77. Experience declares that man is the only animal which devours his own kind; for I can apply no milder term to the governments of Europe, and to the general prey of the rich on the poor.
Thomas Jefferson
#78. Whenever you are to do a thing, though it can never be known but to yourself, ask yourself how you would act if all the world were looking at you, and act accordingly.
Thomas Jefferson
#79. The ground of liberty is to be gained by inches. We must be contented to secure what we can get from time to time and eternally press forward for what is yet to get. It takes time to persuade men to do even what is for their own good.
Thomas Jefferson
#80. I sincerely believe the banking institutions having the issuing power of money, are more dangerous to liberty than standing armies.
Thomas Jefferson
#81. It is as useless to argue with those who have renounced the use of reason as to administer medication to the dead.
Thomas Jefferson
#82. The right of self-government does not comprehend the government of others.
Thomas Jefferson
#83. The foundation on which (our government is) built is the natural equality of man, the denial of every pre-eminence but that annexed to legal office, and particularly the denial of a pre-eminence by birth.
Thomas Jefferson
#84. 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
#85. 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
#86. The evils of war are great in their endurance, and have a long reckoning for ages to come.
Thomas Jefferson
#87. 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.
Thomas Jefferson
#89. A lottery is a salutary instrument and a tax ... laid on the willing only, that is to say, on those who can risk the price of a ticket without sensible injury, for the possibility of a higher prize.
Thomas Jefferson
#90. The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to.
Thomas Jefferson
#91. The Governor would serve a five-year term and be ineligible for reelection.
Thomas Jefferson
#92. He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws of Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
Thomas Jefferson
#93. 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
#94. The plough is to the farmer what the wand is to the sorcerer. Its effect is really like sorcery.
Thomas Jefferson
#95. The moral sense, or conscience, is as much part of a man as his leg or arm. It is given to all in a stronger or weaker degree.. It may be strengthened by exercise.
Thomas Jefferson
#96. The ocean ... like the air, is the common birth-right of mankind.
Thomas Jefferson
#98. I find as I grow older, I love those most, whom I loved first.
Thomas Jefferson
#100. Bank-paper must be suppressed, and the circulating medium must be restored to the nation to whom it belongs.
Thomas Jefferson
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