Thomas Jefferson Quotes

Biography

Type: Statesman, planter, lawyer, architect

Born: April 13, 1743

Died: July 4, 1826 (aged 83)

Thomas Jefferson, a spokesman for democracy, was an American Founding Father, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence (1776), and the third President of the United States (1801–1809).

Thomas Jefferson Quotes

The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.

not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of . . . but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independent stand we are compelled to take.

I had rather be shut up in a very modest cottage with my books, my family and a few old friends, dining on simple bacon, and letting the world roll on as it liked, than to occupy the most splendid post, which any human power can give.

Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of Liberty.

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.

All should be laid open to you without reserve, for there is not a truth existing which I fear, or would wish unknown to the whole world.

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

I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led.

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

The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

There is nothing more unequal than the equal treatment of unequal people.

Honesty is the first chapter of the book wisdom.

And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

A nation which expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, expects that which never was and never will be.

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

I know 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 by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.

If it is believed that these elementary schools will be better managed by the governor and council or any other general authority of the government, than by the parents within each ward, it is a belief against all experience.

I am for freedom of religion, and against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendency of one sect over another.

I am satisfied, and sufficiently occupied with the things which are, without tormenting or troubling myself about those which may indeed be, but of which I have no evidence.

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.

They (religions) 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.

Neither Pagan nor Mahamedan nor Jew ought to be excluded from the civil rights of the Commonwealth because of his religion. -quoting John Locke's argument.

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

Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions any more than our opinions in physics or geometry...

While the art of printing is left to us science can never be retrograde; what is once acquired of real knowledge can never be lost.

I cannot live without books.

All that is necessary for a student is access to a library.

I haven't failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that don't work.

I predict future happiness for Americans, if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.

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.

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

We in America do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate.

I am increasingly persuaded that the earth belongs exclusively to the living and that one generation has no more right to bind another to it's laws and judgments than one independent nation has the right to command another.

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.

...We are all Federalists,and we are all Republicans.

The dead should not rule the living.

Politics, like religion, hold up the torches of martyrdom to the reformers of error.

The care of human life and happiness, and their destruction is the first and only legitimate object of a good government.

Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor.

Love your neighbor as yourself, and your country more than yourself.

The most fortunate of us all in our journey through life frequently meet with calamities and misfortunes which greatly afflict us. To fortify our minds against the attacks of these calamities and misfortunes should be one of the principal studies and endeavors of our lives.

That liberty [is pure] which is to go to all, and not to the few or the rich alone. (to Horatio Gates, 1798)

The main objects of all science, the freedom and happiness of man. . . . [are] the sole objects of all legitimate government.

(A plaque with this quotation, with the first phrase omitted, is in the stairwell of the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty.)

Nature intended me for the tranquil pursuits of science, by rendering them my supreme delight. But the enormities of the times in which I have lived, have forced me to take a part in resisting them, and to commit myself on the boisterous ocean of political passions.

No body wishes more than I do to see such proofs as you exhibit, that nature has given to our black brethren, talents equal to those of the other colors of men, and that the appearance of a want of them is owing merely to the degraded condition of their existence, both in Africa & America.

Whatever enables us to go to war, secures our peace

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

Let us save what remains: not by vaults and locks which fence them from the public eye and use in consigning them to the waste of time, but by such a multiplication of copies, as shall place them beyond the reach of accident.

But every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle.

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

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

How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy!

Those who expect to be both ignorant and free, expect what never was and never will be.

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

Freedom, the first-born of science.

Even in Europe a change has sensibly taken place in the mind of man. Science has liberated the ideas of those who read and reflect, and the American example has kindled feelings of right in the people.

But friendship is precious, not only in the shade but in the sunshine of life; & thanks to a benevolent arrangement of things, the greater part of life is sunshine. I will recur for proof to the days we have lately passed. On these indeed the sun shone brightly.

I find friendship to be like wine, raw when new, ripened with age, the true old man's milk and restorative cordial.

The executive power in our government is not the only, perhaps not even the principal, object of my solicitude. The tyranny of the legislature is really the danger most to be feared, and will continue to be so for many years to come. The tyranny of the executive power will come in its turn, but at a more distant period.

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 subjugation on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it: for man is an imitative animal.

This institution will be based on 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.

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