Thomas Jefferson Quotes - Page 2

I never did or countenanced in public life a single act inconsistent with the strictest good faith having never believed there was one code of morality for a public and another for a private man.
Thomas Jefferson
It is my principle that the will of the majority should always prevail.
Thomas Jefferson
I'm a great believer in luck and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.
Thomas Jefferson
The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time.
Thomas Jefferson
The execution of the laws is more important than the making of them.
Thomas Jefferson
The small landholders are the most precious part of a state.
Thomas Jefferson
The sword of the law should never fall but on those whose guilt is so apparent as to be pronounced by their friends as well as foes.
Thomas Jefferson
Of all calamities this is the greatest.
Thomas Jefferson
I steer my bark with hope in my heart leaving fear astern.
Thomas Jefferson
It is neither wealth nor splendor but tranquility and occupation which give happiness.
Thomas Jefferson
Happiness is not being pained in body nor troubled in mind.
Thomas Jefferson
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.
Thomas Jefferson
I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.
Thomas Jefferson
The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government and to protect its free expression should be our first object.
Thomas Jefferson
That government is best which governs the least because its people discipline themselves.
Thomas Jefferson
Every man wishes to pursue his occupation and to enjoy the fruits of his labours and the produce of his property in peace and safety and with the least possible expense. When these things are accomplished all the objects for which government ought to be established are answered.
Thomas Jefferson
When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. 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 that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed that whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it and to institute new government laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
Thomas Jefferson
France freed from that monster Bonaparte must again become the most agreeable country on earth. It would be the second choice of all whose ties of family and fortune give a preference to some other one and the first choice of all not under those ties.
Thomas Jefferson
Happiness is not being pained in body or troubled in mind.
Thomas Jefferson
Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God if He ever had a chosen people whose breasts He has made His peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue.
Thomas Jefferson
The happiest moments of my life have been the few which I have passed at home in the bosom of my family.
Thomas Jefferson
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal that they are endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights that among these are life liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Thomas Jefferson
The habit of using ardent spirits by men in office has occasioned more injury to the public and more trouble to me than all other causes. Were I to commence my administration again the first question I would ask respecting a candidate for office would be Does he use ardent spirits?
Thomas Jefferson
It is the old practice of despots to use a part of the people to keep the rest in order.
Thomas Jefferson
I am for freedom of religion and against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another.
Thomas Jefferson
Honesty is the first chapter of the book of wisdom.
Thomas Jefferson
In questions of power let no more be heard of confidence in man but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the constitution.
Thomas Jefferson
No government ought to be without censors and where the press is free no one ever will.
Thomas Jefferson
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.
Thomas Jefferson
I succeed him no one could replace him.
Thomas Jefferson
No knowledge can be more satisfactory to a man than that of his own frame its parts their functions and actions.
Thomas Jefferson
Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies.
Thomas Jefferson
All authority belongs to the people.
Thomas Jefferson
Advertisements contain the only truth to be relied on in a newspaper.
Thomas Jefferson
When we see ourselves in a situation which must be endured and gone through it is best to meet it with firmness and accommodate everything to it in the best way practicable. This lessens the evil while fretting and fuming only increase your own torments.
Thomas Jefferson
All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollection of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.
Thomas Jefferson
Enlighten the people, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.
Thomas Jefferson
He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it the second time.
Thomas Jefferson
When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.
Thomas Jefferson
When describing the University of Virginia: 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.
Thomas Jefferson
An enemy generally says and believes what he wishes.
Thomas Jefferson
New York, like London, seems to be a cloacina [toilet] of all the depravities of human nature.
Thomas Jefferson
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.
Thomas Jefferson
Do not bite at the bait of pleasure till you know there is no hook beneath it.
Thomas Jefferson
Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.
Thomas Jefferson
I have often thought that nothing would do more extensive good at small expense than the establishment of a small circulating library in every county, to consist of a few well-chosen books, to be lent to the people of the country under regulations as would secure their safe return in due time.
Thomas Jefferson
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.
Thomas Jefferson
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.
Thomas Jefferson
Whereas it appeareth that however certain forms of government are better calculated than others to protect individuals in the free exercise of their natural rights, and are at the same time themselves better guarded against degeneracy, yet experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny; and it is believed that the most effectual means of preventing this would be, to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large, ....whence it becomes expedient for promoting the publick happiness that those persons, whom nature hath endowed with genius and virtue, should be rendered by liberal education worthy to receive, and able to guard the sacred deposit of the rights and liberties of their fellow citizens, and that they should be called to that charge without regard to wealth, birth or accidental condition of circumstance.
Thomas Jefferson
To your request of my opinion of the manner in which a newspaper should be conducted, so as to be most useful, I should answer, ‘by restraining it to true facts & sound principles only.’ Yet I fear such a paper would find few subscribers. It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more compleatly deprive the nation of its benefits, than is done by its abandoned prostitution to falsehood. Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knolege with the lies of the day. I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens, who, reading newspapers, live & die in the belief, that they have known something of what has been passing in the world in their time; whereas the accounts they have read in newspapers are just as true a history of any other period of the world as of the present, except that the real names of the day are affixed to their fables. General facts may indeed be collected from them, such as that Europe is now at war, that Bonaparte has been a successful warrior, that he has subjected a great portion of Europe to his will, &c., &c.; but no details can be relied on. I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false.”—Letter to John Norvell, 14 June 1807[Works 10:417--18]
Thomas Jefferson
Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle.
Thomas Jefferson
But every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle.
Thomas Jefferson
[n regard to Jesus believing himself inspired]This belief carried no more personal imputation than the belief of Socrates that he was under the care and admonition of a guardian demon. And how many of our wisest men still believe in the reality of these inspirations while perfectly sane on all other subjects (Works, Vol. iv, p. 327).
Thomas Jefferson
It be urged that the wild and uncultivated tree, hitherto yielding sour and bitter fruit only, can never be made to yield better; yet we know that the grafting art implants a new tree on the savage stock, producing what is most estimable in kind and degree. Education, in like manner, engrafts a new man on the native stock, and improves what in his nature was vicious and perverse into qualities of virtue and social worth.
Thomas Jefferson
Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous, and they are tied to their country and wedded to its liberty and interests by the most lasting bonds.
Thomas Jefferson
The fantastical idea of virtue and the public good being a sufficient security to the state against the commission of crimes...was never mine. It is only the sanguinary hue of our penal laws which I meant to object to. Punishments I know are necessary, and I would provide them strict and inflexible, but proportioned to the crime. Death might be inflicted for murder and perhaps for treason, [but I] would take out of the description of treason all crimes which are not such in their nature. Rape, buggery, etc., punish by castration. All other crimes by working on high roads, rivers, gallies, etc., a certain time proportioned to the offence... Laws thus proportionate and mild should never be dispensed with. Let mercy be the character of the lawgiver, but let the judge be a mere machine. The mercies of the law will be dispensed equally and impartially to every description of men; those of the judge or of the executive power will be the eccentric impulses of whimsical, capricious designing man.
Thomas Jefferson
Everything yields to diligence
Thomas Jefferson
I'm a greater believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it
Thomas Jefferson
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.
Thomas Jefferson
I consider him [Alexander von Humboldt] the most important scientist whom I have met.
Thomas Jefferson