Thomas Jefferson Quotes

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

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.

One man with courage is a majority.

My theory has always been, that if we are to dream, the flatteries of hope are as cheap, and pleasanter, than the gloom of despair.

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

Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy, and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it.

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.

Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.

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

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

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

To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.

Force is the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism.

I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

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.

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

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

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.

I cannot live without books.

Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.

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

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

Delay is preferable to error.

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

The second office in the government is honorable and easy; the first is but a splendid misery.

No man will ever carry out of the Presidency the reputation which carried him into it.

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

No duty the Executive had to perform was so trying as to put the right man in the right place.

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.

We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed.

An enemy generally says and believes what he wishes.

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

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

Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.

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

The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.

All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.

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

I own that I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.

There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents.

Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.

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.

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.

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.

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

We never repent of having eaten too little.

The good opinion of mankind, like the lever of Archimedes, with the given fulcrum, moves the world.

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.

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.

Bodily decay is gloomy in prospect, but of all human contemplations the most abhorrent is body without mind.

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

It is always better to have no ideas than false ones; to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong.

There is not a truth existing which I fear... or would wish unknown to the whole world.

Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. 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 blindfolded fear.

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.

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

I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.

No freeman shall be debarred the use of arms.

But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life, and thanks to a benevolent arrangement the greater part of life is sunshine.

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

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.

In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.

History, in general, only informs us of what bad government is.

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

Always take hold of things by the smooth handle.

No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free no one ever will.

I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it.

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.

Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.

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.

It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.

The earth belongs to the living, not to the dead.

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

Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct.

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

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.

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

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

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.

War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses.

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.

Do you want to know who you are? Don't ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.

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