Thomas Jefferson quotes:

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

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.

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of a Censor - over each other.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

To penetrate and dissipate these clouds of darkness, the general mind must be strengthened by education.

He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.

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

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

A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.

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

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

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

Truth is certainly a branch of morality and a very important one to society.

Wisdom I know is social. She seeks her fellows. But Beauty is jealous, and illy bears the presence of a rival.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Leave no authority existing not responsible to the people.

None but an armed nation can dispense with a standing army. To keep ours armed and disciplined is therefore at all times important.

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.

I am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greek and Roman leave to us.

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.

I abhor war and view it as the greatest scourge of mankind.

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.

Power is not alluring to pure minds.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

Peace and abstinence from European interferences are our objects, and so will continue while the present order of things in America remain uninterrupted.

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

A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.

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

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

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

That government is the strongest of which every man feels himself a part.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind.

So confident am I in the intentions, as well as wisdom, of the government, that I shall always be satisfied that what is not done, either cannot, or ought not to be done.

Never spend your money before you have earned it.

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

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

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

When a man assumes a public trust he should consider himself a public property.

The world is indebted for all triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression.

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

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

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

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

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

Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.

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.

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

Errors of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.

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

It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.

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

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

Be polite to all, but intimate with few.

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

Whatever enables us to go to war, secures our peace

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.

[T]he artillery of the press has been leveled against us, charged with whatsoever its licentiousness could devise or dare. These abuses of an institution so important to freedom and science are deeply to be regretted...

If our house be on fire, without inquiring whether it was fired from within or without, we must try to extinguish it.

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."

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

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

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

My views and feelings (are) in favor of the abolition of war-and I hope it is practicable, by improving the mind and morals of society, to lessen the disposition to war; but of its abolition I despair.

Slavery is an abomination and must be loudly proclaimed as such, but I own that I nor any other man has any immediate solution to the problem.

Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus.

Establish the eternal truth that acquiescence under insult is not the way to escape war.

[The purpose of a written constitution is] to bind up the several branches of government by certain laws, which, when they transgress, their acts shall become nullities; to render unnecessary an appeal to the people, or in other words a rebellion, on every infraction of their rights, on the peril that their acquiescence shall be construed into an intention to surrender those rights.

On every question of construction (of the Constitution) let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit of the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.

I sincerely wish you may find it convenient to come here. the pleasure of the trip will be less than you expect, but the utility greater. it will make you adore your own country, it's soil, it's climate, it's equality, liberty, laws, people & manners. my god! how little do my countrymen know...

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

The spirit of this country is totally adverse to a large military force.

A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be your constant companion of your walks.

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

No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another; and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him.

Agriculture is our wisest pursuit, because it will in the end contribute most to real wealth, good morals, and happiness.

The constitutions of most of our States assert that all power is inherent in the people; that... it is their right and duty to be at all times armed.

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

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

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?

A mind always employed is always happy. This is the true secret, the grand recipe, for felicity.

A mind always employed is always happy.

The people will not understand the importance of the Second Amendment until it is too late.

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

what are the objects of an useful American education? classical knowlege, modern languages & chiefly French, Spanish, & Italian; Mathematics; Natural philosophy; Natural History; Civil History; Ethics.

The policy of the American government is to leave their citizens free, neither restraining nor aiding them in their pursuits.

If ever we are constrained to lift the hatchet against any tribe, we will never lay it down till that tribe is exterminated, or driven beyond the Mississippi... in war, they will kill some of us; we shall destroy them all.

The end of democracy and the defeat of the American Revolution will occur when government falls into the hands of lending institutions and moneyed incorporations.