Thomas Jefferson famous quotes

Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Inspirational #Positive #Wisdom

I believe in both a creative and personal God, a divinely ordered universe, that man has an innate moral sense, and that Jesus was a great moral teacher, perhaps the greatest the world has witnessed.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Teacher #Jesus #Believe

If a law is unjust, a man is not only right to disobey it, he is obligated to do so.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Men #Law #Liberty

I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Thinking #Government #Liberty

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

#Strength #Wisdom #Veterans Day

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#4th Of July #People #Needs

The price if freedom us eternal vigilance.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Military #Vigilance

Nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Attitude #Men #Earth

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

#Inspirational #Motivational #Success

When the people fear the government there is tyranny, when the government fears the people there is liberty.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Inspirational #Peace #Atheist

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

#Life #Happiness #Work

The man who would choose security over freedom deserves neither.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Men #He Man #Security

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

#Freedom #Government #Liberty

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Wisdom #Inspiration #Reading

Born in the same land, we ought to live as brothers, doing to each other all the good we can, and not listening to wicked men, who may endeavor to make us enemies. By living in peace, we can help and prosper one another; by waging war, we can kill and destroy many on both sides; but those who survive will not be the happier for that.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Peace #Brother #War

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

#Wisdom #Men #Ideas

Leave no authority existing not responsible to the people.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#People #Responsible #Authority

I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Money #Believe #Army

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

#Life #Time #Liberty

A walk about Paris will provide lessons in history, beauty, and in the point of Life.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Paris #Lessons #Walks

Among the most inestimable of our blessings is that ... of liberty to worship our Creator in the way we think most agreeable to His will; a liberty deemed in other countries incompatible with good government and yet proved by our experience to be its best support.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Country #Religious #Thinking

The beauty of the Second Amendment is that it will not be needed until they try to take it.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#4th Of July #Gun #Second Amendment

besides the comfort of knowlege, every science is auxiliary to every other.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Educational #Comfort

ours are the only farmers who can read Homer
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Educational #Farmers

The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#4th Of July #Government #Two

Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have ... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Government #Liberty #Politics

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

#Life #4th Of July #Patriotic

As our enemies have found we can reason like men, so now let us show them we can fight like men also.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Fighting #Men #Enemy

I am a real Christian - that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus Christ.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Christian #Jesus #Real

The Democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Freedom #Inspiration #Patriotic

I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Gun #Peaceful #Slavery

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

#4th Of July #Government #Citizens

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

#Friendship #Sad #Philosophy

If you want something you’ve never had, you must be willing to do something you’ve never done.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Motivational #Bad Ass #Acting

I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and Constitutions. But laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Change #Peace #Boys

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

#Inspirational #Happiness #Freedom

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.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Strength #Crush #Hope

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.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Fall #Hands #Government

The problem with letting kids on Facebook is that they'll learn all kinds of false quotations.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Kids #Kind #Problem

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

#Business #Book #Reading

If people let the government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as the souls who live under tyranny.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Inspirational #Sorry #Food

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.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Inspirational #Positive #Success

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

#Leadership #Anger #Speak

He who knows best knows how little he knows.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Work #Crafts #Littles

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

#Peace #Honesty #War

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.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Motivational #Fitness #Reading

A government afraid of its citizens is a Democracy. Citizens afraid of government is tyranny!
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Government #Democracy #Citizens

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.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Presidential #Political #Liberty

Had the doctrines of Jesus been preached always as pure as they came from his lips, the whole civilized world would now have been Christians.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Faith #Christian #Jesus

It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#May #Done #Action

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

#Inspirational #America #Government

A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both, and deserve neither.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Order #Liberty #Littles

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

#Motivational #Running #Spiritual

To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Independence #Liberty #Debt

A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which 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. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circlue of our felicities.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Wise #Wisdom #Men

Dependence leads to subservience.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Liberty

If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour?
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Talking #Yield #People

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.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Men #Animal #Demand

The God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Liberty #Conviction #Gift From God

Good wine is a necessity of life for me.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Wine #Culinary #Good Wine

Were we directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we should soon want bread.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#4th Of July #Want #Bread

The whole history of these books (i.e. the Gospels) is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Religious #Book #Men

Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Freedom #4th Of July #Men

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

#Freedom #Educational #Patriotic

In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Country #Religious #Religion

Our legislators are not sufficiently apprized of the rightful limits of their power; that their true office is to declare and enforce only our natural rights and duties, and to take none of them from us.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Rights #Office #Liberty

[T]he States can best govern our home concerns and the general government our foreign ones. I wish, therefore . . . never to see all offices transferred to Washington, where, further withdrawn from the eyes of the people, they may more secretly be bought and sold at market.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Eye #Home #Government

The multiplication of public offices, increase of expense beyond income, growth and entailment of a public debt are indications soliciting the employment of the pruning knife.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Knives #Office #Growth

The same prudence which in private life would forbid our paying our own money for unexplained projects, forbids it in the dispensation of the public moneys.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Projects #Prudence #Private Life

I have sworn upon the altar of God Eternal, hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man", "I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man", and "I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Change #Men #Mind

Was the government to prescribe to us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are now.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Medicine #Rights #Government

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.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Gun Control #People #Southern

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

#Inspirational #God #Religious

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

#Trust #Government #Safety

Never spend your money before you have earned it.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Money #Wealth

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

#Happiness #Government #Pro Life

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

#Truth #Honesty #Fear

That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Patriotic #Government #Discipline

To preserve the freedom of the human mind then and freedom of the press, every spirit should be ready to devote itself to martyrdom; for as long as we may think as we will, and speak as we think, the condition of man will proceed in improvement
-- Thomas Jefferson

#4th Of July #Men #Thinking

But with respect to future debt; would it not be wise and just for that nation to declare in the constitution they are forming that neither the legislature, nor the nation itself can validly contract more debt, than they may pay within their own age, or within the term of 19 years.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Wise #Years #Age

I think all the world would gain by setting commerce at perfect liberty.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Thinking #Perfect #Liberty

It should be our endeavor to cultivate the peace and friendship of every nation . . . . Our interest will be to throw open the doors of commerce, and to knock off all its shackles, giving perfect freedom to all persons for the vent to whatever they may choose to bring into our ports, and asking the same in theirs.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Doors #Giving #Perfect

Give up money, give up fame, give up science, give the earth itself and all it contains rather than do an immoral act. And never suppose that in any possible situation, or under any circumstances, it is best for you to do a dishonorable thing, however slightly so it may appear to you . . . . From the practice of the purest virtue, you may be assured you will derive the most sublime comforts in every moment of life, and in the moment of death.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Giving Up #Practice #Sublime

Those who labour in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen, people, whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#People #Earth #Peculiar

I suppose, indeed, that in public life, a man whose political principles have any decided character and who has energy enough to give them effect must always expect to encounter political hostility from those of adverse principles.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Character #Men #Giving

My confidence is that there will for a long time be virtue and good sense enough in our countrymen to correct abuses.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Long #Abuse #Virtue

I had always hoped that the younger generation receiving their early impressions after the flame of liberty had been kindled in every breast . . . would have sympathized with oppression wherever found, and proved their love of liberty beyond their own share of it.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Flames #Liberty #Generations

The fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follow that, and in its turn wretchedness and oppression.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Horse #Team #Debt

Taxes should be continued by annual or biennial reeactments, because a constant hold, by the nation, of the strings of the public purse is a salutary restraint from which an honest government ought not wish, nor a corrupt one to be permitted, to be free.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Government #Wish #Taxation

Would it not be better to simplify the system of taxation rather than to spread it over such a variety of subjects and pass through so many new hands.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Hands #Taxation #Simplify

Excessive taxation . . . will carry reason & reflection to every man's door, and particularly in the hour of election.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Men #Reflection #Doors

I have been happy . . . in believing that . . . whatever follies we may be led into as to foreign nations, we shall never give up our Union, the last anchor of our hope, and that alone which is to prevent this heavenly country from becoming an arena of gladiators.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Country #Giving Up #Believe

I will not believe our labors are lost. I shall not die without a hope that light and liberty are on a steady advance.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Freedom #Believe #Light

The Declaration of Independence . . . [is the] declaratory charter of our rights, and the rights of man.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Men #Rights #Independence

In America, no other distinction between man and man had ever been known but that of persons in office exercising powers by authority of the laws, and private individuals. Among these last, the poorest laborer stood on equal ground with the wealthiest millionaire, and generally on a more favored one whenever their rights seem to jar.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Exercise #Men #Rights

The ultimate arbiter is the people of the Union.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#People #Unions #Arbiter

It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and as they would be the sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please . . . . Certainly no such universal power was meant to be given them. It [the Constitution] was intended to lace them up straightly within the enumerated powers and those without which, as means, these powers could not be carried into effect.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Mean #Evil #Judging

On every unauthoritative exercise of power by the legislature must the people rise in rebellion or their silence be construed into a surrender of that power to them? If so, how many rebellions should we have had already?
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Exercise #People #Silence

Our peculiar security is in the possession of a written Constitution. Let us not make it a blank paper by construction.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Paper #Peculiar #Constitution

The construction applied . . . to those parts of the Constitution of the United States which delegate Congress a power . . . ought not to be construed as themselves to give unlimited powers, nor a part to be so taken as to destroy the whole residue of that instrument.
-- Thomas Jefferson

#Taken #Giving #United States