Authors — Quotes

Thomas Jefferson Quotes: 36

The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.
One loves to possess arms, though they hope never to have occasion for them.
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.
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.
I cannot live without books.
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.
Do you want to know who you are? Don't ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.
Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy, and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it.
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?
Honesty is the first chapter of the book wisdom.
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.
The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.
The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.
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.
Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions any more than our opinions in physics or geometry...
The Statute Of Virginia For Religious Freedom
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.
Letters of Thomas Jefferson
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.
Letters of Thomas Jefferson
The glow of one warm thought is to me worth more than money.
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.
Letters of Thomas Jefferson
Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none.
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.
Writings: Autobiography/Notes on the State of Virginia/Public & Private Papers/Addresses/Letters
I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be.
There is nothing more unequal than the equal treatment of unequal people.
Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of Liberty.
I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led.
I have no ambition to govern men; it is a painful and thankless office.
It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.
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.
The Declaration of Independence
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.
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.
A nation which expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, expects that which never was and never will be.
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.
Letters of Thomas Jefferson
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.
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 never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.
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.