Thomas Jefferson Quotes

Never spend your money before you have it. — Thomas Jefferson

The only thing a man can take beyond this lifetime is his ethics. — Thomas Jefferson

I leave the world and its affairs to the young and energetic, and resign myself to their care, of whom I have endeavored to take care when young. — Thomas Jefferson

Delay is preferable to error. — Thomas Jefferson

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

The happiest moments my heart knows are those in which it is pouring forth its affections to a few esteemed characters. — Thomas Jefferson

Aristocrats fear the people, and wish to transfer all power to the higher classes of society. — Thomas Jefferson

Health, learning and virtue will ensure your happiness; they will give
you a quiet conscience, private esteem and public honour. — Thomas Jefferson

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

For Heaven's sake discard the monstrous wig which makes the English judges look like rats peeping through bunches of oakum — Thomas Jefferson

A great deal of love given to a few is better than a little to many. — Thomas Jefferson

Do not write me studied letters but ramble as you please. — Thomas Jefferson

It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. — Thomas Jefferson

Love your neighbor as yourself, and your country more than yourself. — Thomas Jefferson

we declared that an attack on any one colony should be considered as an attack on the whole. This — Thomas Jefferson

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

The price of barbecue is eternal vigilance. — Thomas Jefferson

The merchants will manage [commerce] the better, the more they are left free to manage for themselves. — Thomas Jefferson

The more a subject is understood, the more briefly it may be explained. — Thomas Jefferson

The uniform tenor of a man's life furnishes better evidence of what he has said or done on any particular occasion than the word of any enemy. — Thomas Jefferson

Idleness begets ennui, ennui the hypochondriac, and that a diseased body. No laborious person was ever yet hysterical. — Thomas Jefferson

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

The information of the people at large can alone make them the safe as they are the sole depositary of our political and religious freedom. — Thomas Jefferson

The plough is to the farmer what the wand is to the sorcerer. Its effect is really like sorcery. — Thomas Jefferson

Principle will, in ... most ... cases open the way for us to correct conclusion. — Thomas Jefferson

No one has a right to obstruct another exercising his faculties innocently for the relief of sensibilities made a part of his nature. — Thomas Jefferson

New York, like London, seems to be a cloacina [toilet] of all the depravities of human nature. — Thomas Jefferson

Never trust a man who won't accept that there is more than one way to spell a word
Paraphrased — Thomas Jefferson

The rational and peacable instrument of reform, the suffrage of the people. — Thomas Jefferson

It would not be for the public good to have [a majority in Congress of one party] greater [than] two to one. — Thomas Jefferson

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

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

If Thomas Jefferson had heard us, he probably would have said, 'We shouldn't have free speech.' — Robin Quivers

Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. — Thomas Jefferson

Taste cannot be controlled by law. — Thomas Jefferson

It is my disposition to maintain peace until its condition shall be made less tolerable than that of war itself. — Thomas Jefferson

Probably the greatest concentration of talent and genius in this house except for perhaps those times when Thomas Jefferson ate alone. — John F. Kennedy

Knowledge is power ... knowled ge is safety ... knowle dge is happiness. — Thomas Jefferson

My general plan would be to make the States one as to everything connected with foreign nations and several as to everything purely domestic. — Thomas Jefferson

Every man has two countries: his own and France. — Thomas Jefferson

The opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction. — Thomas Jefferson

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

War ... is as much a punishment to the punisher as to the sufferer. — Thomas Jefferson

All the world would be Christian if they were taught the pure Gospel of Christ!. — Thomas Jefferson

It is as useless to argue with those who have renounced the use of reason as to administer medication to the dead. — Thomas Jefferson

Our particular principles of religion are a subject of accountability to God alone. — Thomas Jefferson

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

May it be to the world ... to assume the blessings and security of self-government. — Thomas Jefferson

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

The legislative powers of government reach actions only and not opinions. — Thomas Jefferson

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

No society has gone the way of gulags or concentration camps by following the path of Spinoza and Einstein and Jefferson and Thomas Paine — Christopher Hitchens

The bridge between failure and success is hope. THOMAS JEFFERSON — Dave Ramsey

Rebellion to tyranny is obedience to God. — Thomas Jefferson

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

The only security of all is in a free press. — Thomas Jefferson

Man [is] a rational animal, endowed by nature with rights and with an innate sense of justice. — Thomas Jefferson

We will be soldiers, so our sons may be farmers, so their sons may be artists — Thomas Jefferson

How soon the labor of men would make a paradise of the earth were it not for misgovernment and a diversion of his energies to selfish interests. — Thomas Jefferson

The excellence of every government is its adaptation to the state of those to be governed by it. — Thomas Jefferson

I extremely believe in luck, and I discovered more hard work, your luck as much — Thomas Jefferson

I have seen enough of one war never to wish to see another. — Thomas Jefferson

The power of making war often prevents it, and in our case would give efficacy to our desire of peace. — Thomas Jefferson

By making this wine known to the public, I have rendered my country as great a service as if I had enabled it to pay back the national debt. — Thomas Jefferson

Our business is to have great credit and to use it little. — Thomas Jefferson

While the farmer holds the title to the land, actually, it belongs to all the people because civilization itself rests upon the soil. — Thomas Jefferson

If ignorance is bliss, why aren't more people happy? — Thomas Jefferson

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

Who would think it possible to redirect historical scholarship by explaining what Thomas Jefferson said in the Declaration of Independence? — Edmund Morgan

It is in the love of one's family only that heartfelt happiness is known. — Thomas Jefferson

Merchants have no country. — Thomas Jefferson

Question boldly even the existence of God. — Thomas Jefferson

Debt and revolution are inseparable as cause and effect. — Thomas Jefferson

Some other natural rights ... [have] not yet entered into any declaration of rights. — Thomas Jefferson

The laws that forbid the carrying of arms ... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. — Thomas Jefferson

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

I cannot live without books: but fewer will suffice where amusement, and not use, is the only future object. — Thomas Jefferson

Men as well as rivers grow crooked by following the path of least resistance. — Thomas Jefferson

Error is to be pitied and pardoned: it is the weakness of human nature. But vice is a foul blemish, not pardonable in any character. — Thomas Jefferson

I'd prefer to have dangerous freedom,
than have peaceful slavery — Thomas Jefferson

[A]lthough a republican government is slow to move, yet when once in motion, its momentum becomes irresistible. — Thomas Jefferson

I am never tempted to pray but when a warm feeling for my friends comes athwart my heart. — Thomas Jefferson

It is while we are young that the habit of industry is formed. If not then, it never is afterward. — Thomas Jefferson

Nothing is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man. — Thomas Jefferson

The variety of opinions leads to questions. Questions lead to truth. — Thomas Jefferson

We might have been a free and great people together. — Thomas Jefferson

Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and opressions of the body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day. — Thomas Jefferson

Although we are free by the law, we are not so in practice. — Thomas Jefferson

I'm not Thomas Jefferson. He was a pussy! — Charlie Sheen

My affections were first for my own country, then, generally, for all mankind — Thomas Jefferson

There is no act, however virtuous, for which ingenuity may not find some bad motive. — Thomas Jefferson

I believe that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another. — Thomas Jefferson

We act not for ourselves but for the whole human race. The event of our experiment is to show whether man can be trusted with self - government. — Thomas Jefferson

Of all machines, the human heart is the most complicated and inexplicable. — Thomas Jefferson

No country and no people can be free and ignorant at the same time. — Thomas Jefferson

An hereditary aristocracy ... will change the form of our governments from the best to the worst in the world. — Thomas Jefferson

Don't spend your money till you have it. — Thomas Jefferson

The moment a person forms a theory, his imagination sees in every object only the traits which favor that theory. — Thomas Jefferson

The authors of the gospels were unlettered and ignorant men and the teachings of Jesus have come to us mutilated, misstated and unintelligible. — Thomas Jefferson

In the full tide of successful experiment. — Thomas Jefferson