Top 88 Thomas Jefferson Quotes

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.

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.

Force is the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism.

If God is just, I tremble for my country.

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

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.

An enemy generally says and believes what he wishes.

Walking is the best possible exercise. Habituate yourself to walk very far.

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.

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

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.

Only aim to do your duty, and mankind will give you credit where you fail.

The Creator has not thought proper to mark those in the forehead who are of stuff to make good generals. We are first, therefore, to seek them blindfold, and then let them learn the trade at the expense of great losses.

I sincerely believe… that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies.

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

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.

Taste cannot be controlled by law.

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 blind-folded fear.

A coward is much more exposed to quarrels than a man of spirit.

Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.

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.

Nothing is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man.

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.

The natural cause of the human mind is certainly from credulity to skepticism.

I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the 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 inform their discretion.

Power is not alluring to pure minds.

I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.

Here was buried Thomas Jefferson Author of the Declaration of American Independence Of the Statute of Virginia for religious freedom & Father of the University of Virginia.

When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe.

Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none.

The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time.

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.

If there is one principle more deeply rooted in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest.

I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be.

I find that he is happiest of whom the world says least, good or bad.

I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others.

Politics is such a torment that I advise everyone I love not to mix with it.

We never repent of having eaten too little.

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.

Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.

Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto.

My only fear is that I may live too long. This would be a subject of dread to me.

The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.

As our enemies have found we can reason like men, so now let us show them we can fight like men also.

We may consider each generation as a distinct nation, with a right, by the will of its majority, to bind themselves, but none to bind the succeeding generation, more than the inhabitants of another country.

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.

I have no ambition to govern men; it is a painful and thankless office.

It takes time to persuade men to do even what is for their own good.

It is in our lives and not our words that our religion must be read.

I cannot live without books.

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

Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains.

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

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.

Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government.

Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong.

I have done for my country, and for all mankind, all that I could do, and I now resign my soul, without fear, to my God – my daughter to my country.

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

I am mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, the sale of a book can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too.

No freeman shall be debarred the use of arms.

I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master.

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.

When angry count to ten before you speak. If very angry, count to one hundred.

Delay is preferable to error.

It is our duty still to endeavor to avoid war; but if it shall actually take place, no matter by whom brought on, we must defend ourselves. If our house be on fire, without inquiring whether it was fired from within or without, we must try to extinguish it.

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.

Don’t talk about what you have done or what you are going to do.

Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.

Friendship is but another name for an alliance with the follies and the misfortunes of others. Our own share of miseries is sufficient: why enter then as volunteers into those of another?

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.

Happiness is not being pained in body or troubled in mind.

Resort is had to ridicule only when reason is against us.

Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state.

Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

It is neither wealth nor splendor; but tranquility and occupation which give you happiness.