Thomas Jefferson Quotes (427 Quotes)

One loves to possess arms, though they hope never to have occasion for them.

Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.

It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God.

Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God.

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.

Freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus and trial by juries impartially selected, - these principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us

In every country and every age, the priest had been hostile to Liberty.

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.

They (preachers) dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subversions of the duperies on which they live

This institution will be based upon the illimitable freedom of the human mind. For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.

No defender of slavery, I concede that it has its benevolent aspects in lifting the Negro from savagery and helping prepare him for that eventual freedom which is surely written in the Book of Fate

Force is the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism.

He wove those three threads into a talk ranging from annually spending a week at Halloween as a child collecting candy to giving candy to hundreds of children at Halloween as an adult from childhood assistance he received from adults, particularly after his parents divorced, to saying I challenge you to be a caring adult in someone's life ... Great times call forth great leaders.

One single object...will merit the endless gratitude of the society that of restraining the judges from usurping legislation.

I have but one system of ethics for men and for nations - to be grateful, to be faithful to all engagements and under all circumstances, to be open and generous, promoting in the long run even the interests of both.

The most successful war seldom pays for its losses.

The glow of one warm thought is to me worth more than money.

The two principles on which our conduct towards the Indians should be founded, are justice and fear. After the injuries we have done them, they cannot love us.

No nation is permitted to live in ignorance with impunity

In truth, politeness is artificial good humor, it covers the natural want of it, and ends by rendering habitual a substitute nearly equivalent to the real virtue.

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.

His person, you know, was fine, his stature exactly what one would wish, his deportment easy, erect and noble.

I find the pain of a little censure, even when it is unfounded, is more acute than the pleasure of much praise.

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.

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. It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.

How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

I, however, place economy among the first and most important republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared.

I believe that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another.

I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.

For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their best security.

I know it will give great offense to the clergy, but the advocate of religious freedom is to expect neither peace nor forgiveness from them.

I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.

Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle.

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.

Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.

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.

And let us reflect that, having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little if we countenance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and

I served with General Washington in the Legislature of Virginia... and... with Dr. Franklin in Congress. I never heard either of them speak ten minutes at a time, nor to any but the main point.

He who knows best knows how little he knows.

I know of no safe repository for the ultimate powers of society but the people themselves and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to increase their discretion by education.

Take not from the mouth of labor the bread it as earned.

I am not among those who fear the people. They, and not the rich, are our dependence for continued freedom.

I have great confidence in the common sense of mankind in general.

I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others.

Let us in education dream of an aristocracy of achievement arising out of a democracy of opportunity.

Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.

Reading, reflection and time have convinced me that the interests of society require the observation of those moral precepts only in which all religions agree (for all forbid us to steal, murder, plunder, or bear false witness), and that we should n

I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.

I sincerely congratulate you on the arrival of the mockingbird. Learn all the children to venerate it as a superior being in the form of a bird, or as a being which will haunt them if any harm is done to itself or its eggs.