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Having always observed that public works are much less advantageously managed than the same are by private hands, I have thought it better for the public to go to market for whatever it wants which is to be found there; for there competition brings it down to the minimum value. -- Thomas Jefferson
Laws ... proportionate and mild should never be dispensed with. Let mercy be the character of the law-giver, but let the judge be a mere machine. -- Thomas Jefferson
If all be true that I do think, there are five reasons we should drink. Good friends, good times, or being dry, or lest we should be by and by, or any other reason why -- Thomas Jefferson
The Governor would serve a five-year term and be ineligible for reelection. -- Thomas Jefferson
I am already sensible of decay in the power of walking, and find my memory not so faithful as it used to be. This may be partly owing to the incessant current of new matter flowing constantly through it; but I ascribe to years their share in it also. -- Thomas Jefferson
Certainly, no power to prescribe any religious exercise, or to assume authority in religious discipline, has been delegated to the General Government. -- Thomas Jefferson
It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself. -- Thomas Jefferson
The purse of the people is the real seat of sensibility. Let it be drawn upon largely, and they will then listen to truths which could not excite them through any other organ. -- Thomas Jefferson
I love to see honest and honorable men at the helm, men who will not bend their politics to their purses, nor pursue measures by which they may profit, and then profit by their measures. -- Thomas Jefferson
When the subject is strong, simplicity is the only way to treat it. -- Thomas Jefferson
If I am to meet with a disappointment, the sooner I know it, the more of life I shall have to wear it off. -- Thomas Jefferson
I have lived temperately, eating little animal food, and that not as an aliment, so much as a condiment for the vegetables, which constitute my principal diet. -- Thomas Jefferson
I am never tempted to pray but when a warm feeling for my friends comes athwart my heart. -- Thomas Jefferson
A truth now and then projecting into the ocean of newspaper lies serves like headlands to correct our course. Indeed, my scepticism as to everything I see in a newspaper makes me indifferent whether I ever see one. -- Thomas Jefferson
While wading through the whimsies, the puerilities, and unintelligible jargon of this work [Plato's Republic], I laid it down often to ask myself how it could have been that the world should have so long consented to give reputation to such nonsense as this? -- Thomas Jefferson
I have much confidence that we shall proceed successfully for ages to come. My hope of its duration is built much on the enlargement of the resources of life going hand in hand with the enlargement of territory. -- Thomas Jefferson
I find as I grow older, I love those most, whom I loved first. -- Thomas Jefferson
Of all the errors which can possibly be committed to the education of youth, that of sending them to Europe is the most fatal. I see [clearly] that no American should come to Europe under 30 years of age. -- Thomas Jefferson
Let us save what remains: not by vaults and locks which fence them from the public eye and use in consigning them to the waste of time, but by such a multiplication of copies, as shall place them beyond the reach of accident. -- Thomas Jefferson
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
The children of Israel in the wilderness, led by a cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by night. -- Thomas Jefferson
Men as well as rivers grow crooked by following the path of least resistance. -- Thomas Jefferson
The diffusion of information and the arraignment of all abuses at the bar of public reason, I deem [one of] the essential principles of our government, and consequently [one of] those which ought to shape its administration. -- Thomas Jefferson
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. -- Thomas Jefferson
You see I am an enthusiast on the subject of the arts. But it is an enthusiasm of which I am not ashamed, as its object is to improve the taste of my countrymen, to increase their reputation, to reconcile to them the respect of the world, and procure them its praise. -- Thomas Jefferson
All things here appear to me to trudge on in one and the same round: we rise in the morning that we may eat breakfast, dinner andsupper and to bed again that we may get up the next morning and do the same: so that you never saw two peas more alike than our yesterday and to-day. -- Thomas Jefferson
With your talents and industry, with science, and that steadfast honesty, which eternally pursues right, regardless of consequences, you may promise yourself everything but health, without which there is no happiness. -- Thomas Jefferson
Experience declares that man is the only animal which devours his own kind; for I can apply no milder term to the governments of Europe, and to the general prey of the rich on the poor. -- 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
If the question [before justices of the peace] relate to any point of public liberty, or if it be one of those in which the judges may be suspected of bias, the jury undertake to decide both law and fact. -- Thomas Jefferson
[Christianity is] the most ... perverted system that ever shone on man. -- Thomas Jefferson
No freeman shall be debarred the use of arms. -- Thomas Jefferson
No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms. -- Thomas Jefferson
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. -- 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
The qualifications for self-government in society are not innate. they are the result of habit and long training. -- Thomas Jefferson
The Christian religion is the best religion that has ever been given to man -- Thomas Jefferson
When all government ... in little as in great things ... shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power; it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another, and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated. -- Thomas Jefferson
When the heart is right, the feet are swift. -- Thomas Jefferson
The reward of esteem, respect and gratitude [is] due to those who devote their time and efforts to render the youths of every successive age fit governors for the next. -- Thomas Jefferson
But the fact being once established, that the press is impotent when it abandons itself to falsehood, I leave to others to restore it to its strength, by recalling it within the pale of truth. Within that, it is a noble institution, equally the friend of science and of civil liberty. -- Thomas Jefferson
To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical. -- Thomas Jefferson
My principles, and those always received by the republicans, do not admit to removing any person from office merely for a difference of political opinion. Malversations in office, and the exerting of official influence to control the freedom of election are good causes for removal. -- Thomas Jefferson
The doctrines of Jesus are simple, and tend to all the happiness of man. -- Thomas Jefferson
When the course of events shall have removed you to distant scenes of action where laurels not nurtured with the blood of my country may be gathered, I shall urge sincere prayers for your obtaining every honor and preferment which may gladden the heart of a soldier. -- Thomas Jefferson
Let us in education dream of an aristocracy of achievement arising out of a democracy of opportunity -- Thomas Jefferson
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
There is a fulness of time when men should go, and not occupy too long the ground to which others have a right to advance. -- Thomas Jefferson
I can't live without books -- Thomas Jefferson
It is too late in the day for men of sincerity to pretend they believe in the Platonic mysticisms that three are one, and one is three; and yet that the one is not three, and the three are not one. -- Thomas Jefferson
Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law. -- Thomas Jefferson
Granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, -- Thomas Jefferson
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
Perceiving the order of nature to be that individual happiness shall be inseparable from the practice of virtue, I am willing to hope it may have ordained that the fall of the wicked shall be the rise of the good.
To J. Correa de Serra, Monticello, Apr. 19, 1814 -- Thomas Jefferson
Without society, and a society to our taste, men are never contented. -- Thomas Jefferson
It is highly interesting to our country, and it is the duty of its functionaries, to provide that every citizen in it should receive an education proportioned to the condition and pursuits of his life. -- Thomas Jefferson
The best (remedy) I can devise would be to give future commissions to (federal) judges for six years with a re-appointability by the President with the approbation of both houses. If this would not be independence enough, I know not what would be ... -- Thomas Jefferson
In the environment, every victory is temporary, every defeat permanent. -- Thomas Jefferson
A prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a people who mean to be free. -- Thomas Jefferson
Lay down true principles and adhere to them inflexibly. Do not be frightened into their surrender by the alarms of the timid, or the croakings of wealth against the ascendency of the people. -- Thomas Jefferson
Whiskey claims to itself alone the exclusive office of sot-making. -- Thomas Jefferson
But this momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. -- Thomas Jefferson
To draw around the whole nation the strength of the General Government
as a barrier against foreign foes ... is [one of the] functions of the General Government on which [our citizens] have a right to call. -- Thomas Jefferson
It is my disposition to maintain peace until its condition shall be made less tolerable than that of war itself. -- Thomas Jefferson
If the body be feeble, the mind will not be strong. -- Thomas Jefferson
Where thought is free in its range, we need never fear to hazard what is good in itself. -- Thomas Jefferson
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 ... -- Thomas Jefferson
All the States but our own are sensible that knowlege is power. -- Thomas Jefferson
A system of general instruction, which shall reach every description of our citizens, from the richest to the poorest, as it was the earliest, so will it be the latest, of all the public concerns in which I shall permit myself to take an interest. -- Thomas Jefferson
I own that I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive. -- Thomas Jefferson
I have seen enough of one war never to wish to see another. -- Thomas Jefferson
Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God -- Thomas Jefferson
Governments constantly choose between telling lies and fighting wars, with the end result always being the same. One will always lead to the other. -- Thomas Jefferson
The sickly, weakly, timid man fears the people, and is a Tory by nature. The healthy, strong and bold cherishes them, and is formed a Whig by nature. -- Thomas Jefferson
Free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence; it is jealousy, and not confidence, which prescribes limited constitutions, to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power. -- Thomas Jefferson
I see the necessity of sacrificing our opinions sometimes to the opinions of others for the sake of harmony. -- Thomas Jefferson
In our early struggles for liberty, religious freedom could not fail to become a primary object. -- Thomas Jefferson
Above all things, lose no occasion of exercising your dispositions to be grateful, to be generous, to be charitable, to be humane, to be true, just, firm, orderly, courageous, etc. Consider every act of this kind as an exercise which will strengthen your moral faculties and increase your worth. -- Thomas Jefferson
Above all things, and at all times, practice yourself in good humor. -- Thomas Jefferson
Give up money, give up fame, give up science, give the earth itself and all it contains, rather than do an immoral act. -- Thomas Jefferson
It is reasonable that everyone who asks justice should do justice -- Thomas Jefferson
I do not know whether you are fond of chemical reading. There are some things in this science worth reading. -- Thomas Jefferson
The liberty of the whole earth was depending on the issue of the contest, and was ever such a prize won with so little innocent blood? -- Thomas Jefferson
There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents. -- Thomas Jefferson
Stock dealers and banking companies, by the aid of a paper system, are enriching themselves to the ruin of our country, and swaying the government by their possession of the printing presses, which their wealth commands and by any other means, not always honorable to the character of our countrymen. -- Thomas Jefferson
The expedition of Messrs. Lewis & Clarke for exploring the river Missouri, & the best communication from that to the Pacific ocean, has had all the success which could have been expected. -- Thomas Jefferson
That the several states who formed that instrument, being sovereign and independent, have the unquestionable right to judge of its infraction; and that a nullification, by those sovereignties, of all unauthorized acts done under colour of that instrument, is the rightful remedy. -- Thomas Jefferson
When earth is rich it bids defiance to droughts, yields in abundance and of the best quality. -- Thomas Jefferson
The bloom of Monticello is chilled by my solitude. -- Thomas Jefferson
I am savage enough to prefer the woods, the wilds, and the independence of Monticello, to all the brilliant pleasures of this gay capital [Paris]. -- Thomas Jefferson
I never before knew the full value of trees ... What would I not give that the trees planted nearest round the house at Monticello were full grown. -- Thomas Jefferson
If there is a gratification which I envy any people in this world it is to your country [Italy] its music. This is the favorite passion of my soul, and fortune has cast my lot in a country where it is in a state of deplorable barbarism. -- Thomas Jefferson
A room without books is like a life without meaning. -- Thomas Jefferson
A mind always employed is always happy. This is the true secret, the grand recipe, for felicity. -- Thomas Jefferson
When the people fear the government there is tyranny, when the government fears the people there is liberty. -- Thomas Jefferson
A country whose buildings are of wood, can never increase in its improvements to any considerable degree ... Whereas when buildings are of durable materials, every new edifice is an actual and permanent acquisition to the state, adding to its value as well as to its ornament. -- Thomas Jefferson
I advance it therefore as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments of both body and mind. -- Thomas Jefferson
A single good government is a blessing to the whole earth. -- Thomas Jefferson
It look like the lord just work for wite folks cause ever sens i wasn nothin but a litle boy i been on my on haulin water to the fiel on that ol water cart wit all them dime bukets an that dipper just hittin an old dorthy just trottin and trottin an me up their hittin her wit that rope ... -- Thomas Jefferson
We confide in our strength, without boasting of it, we respect that of others, without fearing it. -- Thomas Jefferson
If anything pass in a religious meeting seditiously and contrary to the public peace, let it be punished in the same manner and no otherwise than as if it had happened in a fair or market. -- Thomas Jefferson
Never trust a man who won't accept that there is more than one way to spell a word
Paraphrased -- Thomas Jefferson
For the present we may groupe the sciences into Professorships as follows, subject however to be changed according to the qualifications of the persons we may be able to engage. -- Thomas Jefferson
A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine. -- Thomas Jefferson
Exercise and application produce order in our affairs, health of body, cheerfulness of mind, and these make us precious to our friends -- Thomas Jefferson
From candlelight to early bedtime, I read. -- Thomas Jefferson
Man is not made for the State but the State for man and it derives its just powers only from the consent of the governed. -- Thomas Jefferson
A lottery is a salutary instrument and a tax ... laid on the willing only, that is to say, on those who can risk the price of a ticket without sensible injury, for the possibility of a higher prize. -- Thomas Jefferson
Nothing is so engaging as the little domestic cares into which you appear to be entering, and as to reading it is useful for onlyfilling up the chinks of more useful and healthy occupations. -- Thomas Jefferson
[T]he people seem to have deposited the monarchical and taken up the republican government with as much ease as would have attended their throwing off an old and putting on a new suit of clothes. -- Thomas Jefferson
To history therefore I must refer for answer, in which it would be an unhappy passage indeed, which should shew by what fatal indulgence of subordinate views and passions, a contest for an atom had defeated well founded prospects of giving liberty to half the globe. -- Thomas Jefferson
[I]n Great-Britain it is said that their constitution relies on the house of commons for honesty, and the lords for wisdom; whichwould be a rational reliance if honesty were to be bought with money, and if wisdom were hereditary. -- Thomas Jefferson
He [Weishaupt] says, no one ever laid a surer foundation for liberty than our grand master, Jesus of Nazareth. -- Thomas Jefferson
The elective franchise, if guarded as the ark of our safety, will peaceably dissipate all combinations to subvert a Constitution, dictated by the wisdom, and resting on the will of the people. -- Thomas Jefferson
The foundation on which (our government is) built is the natural equality of man, the denial of every pre-eminence but that annexed to legal office, and particularly the denial of a pre-eminence by birth. -- Thomas Jefferson
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. -- Thomas Jefferson
When great evils happen, I am in the habit of looking out for what good may arise from them as consolations to us, and Providence has in fact so established the order of things, as that most evils are the means of producing some good. -- Thomas Jefferson
Industry, commerce and security are the surest roads to the happiness and prosperity of people. -- Thomas Jefferson
What has destroyed liberty and the rights of man in every government which has ever existed under the sun? The generalizing and concentrating all cares and power into one body, no matter whether of the autocrats of Russia or France, or of the aristocrats of a Venetian senate. -- Thomas Jefferson
The happiness of society depends so much on preventing party spirit from infecting the common intercourse of life, that nothing should be spared to harmonize and amalgamate the two parties in social circles. -- Thomas Jefferson
No man complains of his neighbor for ill management of his affairs, for an error in sowing his land, or marrying his daughter, for consuming his substance in taverns ... in all these he has liberty; but if he does not frequent the church, or then conform in ceremonies, there is an immediate uproar. -- Thomas Jefferson
Is it less dishonest to do what is wrong because it is not expressly prohibited by written law? Let us hope our moral principles are not yet in that stage of degeneracy. -- Thomas Jefferson
Whenever you do a thing, act as if all the world were watching. -- Thomas Jefferson
Bank-paper must be suppressed, and the circulating medium must be restored to the nation to whom it belongs. -- Thomas Jefferson
[I]t seems that the Cannibals of Europe are going to eat one another again. A war between Russia and Turkey is like the battle of the kite and snake; whichever destroys the other, leaves a destroyer the less for the world. -- Thomas Jefferson
Taxation is, in fact, the most difficult function of government and that against which their citizens are most apt to be refractory. -- Thomas Jefferson
A great deal of love given to a few is better than a little to many. -- Thomas Jefferson
I wish to see this beverage become common instead of the whiskey which kills sone-third of our citizens and ruins their families. -- Thomas Jefferson
No nation is drunken where wine is cheap, and none sober where the dearness of wine substitutes ardent spirits as the common beverage -- 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 clergy converted the simple teachings of Jesus into an engine for enslaving mankind and adulterated by artificial constructions into a contrivance to filch wealth and power to themselves ... these clergy, in fact, constitute the real Anti-Christ. -- Thomas Jefferson
My only fear is that I may live too long. This would be a subject of dread to me. -- Thomas Jefferson
No man has greater confidence than I have in the spirit of the people, to a rational extent. Whatever they can, they will. -- Thomas Jefferson
I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master. -- Thomas Jefferson
If God is just, I tremble for my country. -- Thomas Jefferson
The measure of society is how it treats the weakest members -- Thomas Jefferson
We are overdone with banking institutions, which have banished the precious metals, and substituted a more fluctuating and unsafe medium ... These have withdrawn capital from useful improvements and employments to nourish idleness ... These are evils more easily to be deplored than remedied. -- Thomas Jefferson
Our people shall be free -- Thomas Jefferson
If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send 150 lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, & talk by the hour? That 150 lawyers should do business together ought not to be expected. -- Thomas Jefferson
One loves to possess arms, though they hope never to have occasion for them. -- Thomas Jefferson
The true fountains of evidence [are] the head and heart of every rational and honest man. It is there nature has written her moral laws, and where every man may read them for himself. -- Thomas Jefferson
Religion is a subject on which I have ever been most scrupulously reserved. I have considered it as a matter between every man and his Maker, in which no other, and far less the public, had a right to intermeddle. -- Thomas Jefferson
The art of printing secures us against the retrogradation of reason and information. -- Thomas Jefferson
I hold it certain that to open the doors of truth and to fortify the habit of testing everything by reason are the most effectual manacles we can rivet on the hands of our successors to prevent their manacling the people with their own consent. -- Thomas Jefferson
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws of Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands. -- Thomas Jefferson
We love and we value peace; we know its blessings from experience. We abhor the follies of war, and are not untried in its distresses and calamities. -- Thomas Jefferson
If we cannot secure all our rights, let us secure what we can. -- Thomas Jefferson
The Petition of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Chapman Johnson, Joseph C. Cabell, James Breckenridge, John Hartwell Cocke, and Robert Taylor the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia ... Respectfully representeth ... That the value of science to a republican people, the security it ... -- Thomas Jefferson
Music furnishes a delightful recreation for the hours of respite from the cares of the day, and lasts us through life. -- Thomas Jefferson
My religious reading has long been confined to the moral branch of religion, which is the same in all religions; while in that branch which consists of dogmas, all differ[. -- Thomas Jefferson
Tranquility is the old man's milk. -- Thomas Jefferson
The most fortunate of us all in our journey through life frequently meet with calamities and misfortunes which greatly afflict us. To fortify our minds against the attacks of these calamities and misfortunes should be one of the principal studies and endeavors of our lives. -- Thomas Jefferson
With respect to the distribution of your time the following is what I should approve. from 8. to 10 o'clock practise music. from 10. to 1. dance one day & draw another. from 1. to 2. draw on the day you dance, and write a letter next day. from 3. to 4. read French. from 4. to 5. exercise ... -- Thomas Jefferson
Every man cannot have his way in all things. If his opinion prevails at some times, he should acquiesce on seeing that of others preponderate at other times. Without this mutual disposition we are disjointed individuals, but not a society. -- Thomas Jefferson
The small landholders are the most precious part of a state. -- 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
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
I am sure that in estimating every man's value either in private or public life, a pure integrity is the quality we take first into calculation, and that learning and talents are only the second. -- Thomas Jefferson
The good opinion of mankind, like the lever of Archimedes, with the given fulcrum, moves the world. -- Thomas Jefferson
Never trust quotes you find on the internet. -- Thomas Jefferson
The smell rewards the care. -- Thomas Jefferson
Civil government being the sole object of forming societies, its administration must be conducted by common consent. -- Thomas Jefferson
How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy! -- Thomas Jefferson
I considered 4 of these bills [of the revised code of Virginia] as forming a system by which every fibre would be eradicated of antient or future aristocracy; and a foundation laid for a government truly republican. -- Thomas Jefferson
Every human being must be viewed according to what it is good for. For not one of us, no, not one, is perfect. And were we to love none who had imperfection, this world would be a desert for our love. -- Thomas Jefferson
An elective despotism was not the government we fought for. -- Thomas Jefferson
If thinking men would have the courage to think for themselves, and to speak what they think, it would be found they do not differ in religious opinions as much as is supposed. -- Thomas Jefferson
The wise know too well their weakness to assume infallibility; and he who knows most knows best how little he knows. -- Thomas Jefferson
The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them, in-as-much as he who knows nothing is nearer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehood and errors. -- Thomas Jefferson
Those who expect to be both ignorant and free, expect what never was and never will be. -- Thomas Jefferson
We must be contented to amuse, when we cannot inform. -- Thomas Jefferson
There is not in the British empire a man who more cordially loves a union with Great Britain than I do. But by the God that made me, I will cease to exist before I yield to a connection on such terms as the British Parliament propose. -- Thomas Jefferson
The general (federal) government will tend to monarchy, which will fortify itself from day to day, instead of working its own cures. -- Thomas Jefferson
I felt enough of the effect of withdrawing from the world then, to see that it led to an antisocial and misanthropic state of mind, which severely punished him who gives in to it. And it will be a lesson I never shall forget as to myself. -- Thomas Jefferson
With all the defects in our Constitution, whether general or particular, the comparison of our government with those of Europe, is like a comparison of Heaven with Hell. England, like the earth, may be allowed to take the intermediate station. -- Thomas Jefferson
The government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers. -- Thomas Jefferson
Every nation has a right to govern itself internally under what forms it pleases, and to change these forms at its own will. -- Thomas Jefferson
Turning, then, from this loathsome combination of church and state, and weeping over the follies of our fellow men, who yield themselves the willing dupes and drudges of these mountebanks, I consider reformation and redress as desperate, and abandon them to the Quixotism of more enthusiastic minds. -- Thomas Jefferson
The people are the ultimate guardians of their own liberties. In every government on earth is some trace of human weakness, some germ of corruption and degeneracy ... Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. -- Thomas Jefferson
I hope we shall ... crush in it's birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and to bid defiance to the laws of their country. -- Thomas Jefferson
Would the honest patriot, in the full tide of successful experiment, abandon a government which has so far kept us free and firm on the theoretic and visionary fear that this Government, the world's best hope, may by possibility want energy to preserve itself? I trust not. -- Thomas Jefferson
Not for ourselves alone, but for all humanity ... Let us hasten to find the path that leads to liberty, safety, and peace for everyone. -- Thomas Jefferson
Our part is to pursue with steadiness what is right, turning neither to right nor left for the intrigues or popular delusions of the day, assured that the public approbation will in the end be with us. -- Thomas Jefferson
Never yet could I find that a black had uttered a thought above the level of plain narration; never saw even an elemental trait of painting or sculpture. -- Thomas Jefferson
I like the power given the Legislature to levy taxes, and for that reason solely approve of the greater house being chosen by the people directly. -- Thomas Jefferson
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
I am myself an empiric in natural philosophy, suffering my faith to go no further than my facts. I am pleased, however, to see the efforts of hypothetical speculation, because by the collisions of different hypotheses, truth may be elicited and science advanced in the end. -- Thomas Jefferson
They are nations of eternal war. All their energies are expended in the destruction of the labor, property, and lives of their people. -- Thomas Jefferson
Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched? -- Thomas Jefferson
When sins are dear to us we are too prone to slide into them again. The act of repentance itself is often sweetened with the thought that it clears our account for a repetition of the same sin. -- Thomas Jefferson
The juries are our judges of all fact, and of law when they choose it. -- Thomas Jefferson
Never throw off the best affections of nature in the moment when they become most precious to their object; nor fear to extend you hand to save another, lest you should sink yourself. -- Thomas Jefferson
We need a revolution every 20 years just to keep government honest. -- Thomas Jefferson
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. -- Thomas Jefferson
Men possessing minds of the first order and who have had opportunities of being known and of acquiring the general confidence do not abound in any country beyond the wants of the country. -- Thomas Jefferson
The same political parties which now agitiate the US have existed through all time. And in fact the terms of whig and tory belong to natural as well as to civil history. They denote the temper and constitution and mind of different individuals. -- Thomas Jefferson
I do love this people [the French] with all my heart, and think that with a better religion and a better form of government and their present governors their condition and country would be most enviable. -- Thomas Jefferson
[The Federal Convention] is really an assembly of demigods. -- Thomas Jefferson
As you are entered with the class of Nat. philosophy, give to it the hours of lecture, but devote all your other time to Mathematics, avoiding company as the bane of all progress. -- Thomas Jefferson
If our legislature does not heartily push our University [of Virginia] we must send our children for education to Kentucky [Transylvania College] or Cambridge [Harvard College]. The latter will return them to us as fanatics and tories, the former will keep them to add to their population. -- Thomas Jefferson
Men are disposed to live honestly, if the means of doing so are open to them. -- Thomas Jefferson
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. -- Thomas Jefferson
It is the trade of lawyers to question everything, yield nothing, and to talk by the hour -- Thomas Jefferson
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. -- Thomas Jefferson
Wisdom I know is social. She seeks her fellows. But Beauty is jealous, and illy bears the presence of a rival. -- Thomas Jefferson
But a short time elapsed after the death of the great reformer of the Jewish religion, before his principles were departed from by those who professed to be his special servants, and perverted into an engine for enslaving mankind, and aggrandizing their oppressors in Church and State. -- Thomas Jefferson
If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union, or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated, where reason is left free to combat it.
[First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801] -- Thomas Jefferson
Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred -- Thomas Jefferson
Though you cannot see, when you take one step, what will be the next, yet follow truth, justice, and plain dealing, and never fear their leading you out of [any difficult situation] in the easiest manner possible ... -- Thomas Jefferson
We are here lounging our time away, doing nothing, and having nothing to do. It gives me great regret to be passing my time so uselessly when it could have been so importantly employed at home. -- Thomas Jefferson
Our minds and hearts are free to believe everything or nothing at all - and it is our duty to protect and perpetuate this sacred culture of freedom. -- Thomas Jefferson
Common sense is the foundation of all authorities, of the laws themselves, and of their construction. -- Thomas Jefferson
When you abandon freedom to achieve security, you lose both and deserve neither. -- Thomas Jefferson
May it be to the world ... to assume the blessings and security of self-government. -- Thomas Jefferson
It is a problem, not clear in my mind, that [a society without government, as among our Indians] is not the best. But I believe it to be inconsistent with any great degree of population. -- Thomas Jefferson
Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions any more than our opinions in physics or geometry ... -- Thomas Jefferson
Considering the great importance to the public liberty of the freedom of the press, and the difficulty of submitting it to very precise rules, the laws have thought it less mischievous to give greater scope to its freedom than to the restraint of it. -- Thomas Jefferson
The mass of our citizens may be divided into two classes
the laboring and the learned. The laboring will need the first grade of education to qualify them for their pursuits and duties; the learned will need it as a foundation for further acquirements. -- Thomas Jefferson
The great object of my fear is the federal judiciary. That body, like gravity, ever acting, with noiseless foot, and unalarming advance, gaining ground step by step, and holding what it gains, is ingulfing insidiously the special governments into the jaws of that which feeds them. -- Thomas Jefferson
There are two subjects, indeed, which I shall claim a right to further as long as I breathe: the public education, and the sub-division of counties into wards. I consider the continuance of republican government as absolutely hanging on these two hooks. -- Thomas Jefferson
The art of governing consists simply of being honest, exercising common sense, following principle, and doing what is right and just. -- Thomas Jefferson
In reviewing the history of the times through which we have passed, no portion of it gives greater satisfaction or reflection, than that which represents the efforts of the friends of religious freedom and the success with which they are crowned. -- Thomas Jefferson
Resolved ... that it would be a dangerous delusion were a confidence in the men of our choice to silence our fears for the safety of our rights: that confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism - free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence; -- Thomas Jefferson
An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens. -- Thomas Jefferson
The only true corrective of Constitutional abuses is education. -- Thomas Jefferson
Of all machines, the human heart is the most complicated and inexplicable. -- Thomas Jefferson
Do you want to know who you are? Don't ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you. -- Thomas Jefferson
There is a debt of service due from every man to his country, proportioned to the bounties which nature and fortune have measured to him. -- Thomas Jefferson
The bulk of mankind are schoolboys through life. -- Thomas Jefferson
There is no habit you will value so much as that of walking far without fatigue. -- Thomas Jefferson
Resisting tyranny is obeying God -- Thomas Jefferson
The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground. -- Thomas Jefferson
The only greater [evil] than separation ... [is] living under a government of discretion. -- Thomas Jefferson
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. -- Thomas Jefferson
It is strangely absurd to suppose that a million of human beings, collected together, are not under the same moral laws which bind each of them separately. -- Thomas Jefferson
No people who are ignorant can be truly free. -- Thomas Jefferson
Circumstances sometimes require, that rights the most unquestionable should be advanced with delicacy. -- Thomas Jefferson
Our fellow-citizens think they have a right to full information, in a case of such great concernment to them. It is their sweat which is to earn all the expenses of the war, and their blood which is to flow in expiation of the causes of it. -- Thomas Jefferson
In a government bottomed on the will of all, the ... liberty of every individual citizen becomes interesting to all. -- Thomas Jefferson
I advance with obedience to the work, ready to retire from it whenever you become sensible how much better choice it is in your power to make. -- Thomas Jefferson
The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy but cannot disjoin them. -- Thomas Jefferson
No body wishes more than I do to see such proofs as you exhibit, that nature has given to our black brethren, talents equal to those of the other colors of men, and that the appearance of a want of them is owing merely to the degraded condition of their existence, both in Africa & America. -- Thomas Jefferson
I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led. -- Thomas Jefferson
[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
The selfish spirit of commerce, which knows no country, and feels no passion or principle but that of gain. -- Thomas Jefferson
No nation is permitted to live in ignorance with impunity -- Thomas Jefferson
It is not to the moderation and justice of others we are to trust for fair and equal access to market with out productions, or for our due share in the transportation of them; but to our own means of independence, and the firm will to use them. -- Thomas Jefferson
It's only merit was in being the first publication which carried the claim of our rights their whole length, and asserted that there was no rightful link of connection between us and England but that of being under the same king. -- Thomas Jefferson
Man once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind. With such persons, gullibility, which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason, and the mind becomes a wreck. -- Thomas Jefferson
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
We are not immortal ourselves, my friend; how can we expect our enjoyments to be so? We have no rose without its thorn; no pleasure without alloy. It is the law of our existence; and we must acquiesce. -- Thomas Jefferson
I am a real Christian, that is to say, a cisciple of the doctrines of Jesus. I have little doubt that our whole country will soon be rallied to the unity of our Creator. -- Thomas Jefferson
Religious leaders will always avail themselves of public ignorance for their own purpose. -- Thomas Jefferson
Nobody is better than you and remember, you are better than nobody. Thomas Jefferson -- Thomas Jefferson
Health is value greater than studying. -- Thomas Jefferson
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. -- Thomas Jefferson
The plough is to the farmer what the wand is to the sorcerer. Its effect is really like sorcery. -- 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
I feel a much greater interest in knowing what has passed two or three thousand years ago, than in what is now passing. I read nothing, therefore, but of the heroes of Troy, ... of Pompey and Caesar, and of Augustus too. -- Thomas Jefferson
Whatever enables us to go to war, secures our peace -- Thomas Jefferson
The evils of war are great in their endurance, and have a long reckoning for ages to come. -- Thomas Jefferson
The private buildings [of Virginia] are very rarely constructed of stone or brick; much the greatest proportion being of scantlingand boards, plastered with lime. It is impossible to devise things more ugly, uncomfortable, and happily more perishable. -- Thomas Jefferson
I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government; I mean an additional article taking from the Federal Government the power of borrowing. -- Thomas Jefferson
We commit honest maniacs to Bedlam, so judges should be withdrawn from their bench, whose erroneous biases are leading us to dissolution. -- 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
If some period be not fixed, either by the Constitution or by practice, to the services of the First Magistrate, his office, though nominally elective, will, in fact, be for life, and that will soon degenerate into an inheritance. -- Thomas Jefferson
That these are our grievances which we have thus laid before his majesty, with that freedom of language and sentiment which becomes a free people claiming their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate. -- Thomas Jefferson
I never saw an instance of one or two disputants convincing the other by argument. -- Thomas Jefferson
I have wished to see chemistry applied to domestic objects, to malting, for instance, brewing, making cider, to fermentation and distillation generally, to the making of bread, butter, cheese, soap, to the incubation of eggs, &c. -- Thomas Jefferson
The precepts of philosophy and of the Hebrew code, laid hold of actions only. (Jesus) pushed his scrutinies into the heart of man, erected his tribunal in the regions of his thoughts, and purified the waters at the fountain head. -- Thomas Jefferson
[An] act of the Congress of the United States ... which assumes powers ... not delegated by the Constitution, is not law, but is altogether void and of no force. -- Thomas Jefferson
The Constitution of most of our states (and of the United States) assert that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed. -- Thomas Jefferson
The judiciary of the United States is the subtle corps of sappers and miners constantly working under ground to undermine the foundations of our confederated fabric. They are construing our constitution from a co-ordination of a general and special government to a general and supreme one alone. -- Thomas Jefferson
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
The Constitution is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please. -- Thomas Jefferson
Ambition is a tricky little animal to tame. It is very skillful at concealing itself from its master. -- Thomas Jefferson
Knowing that religion does not furnish grosser bigots than law, I expect little from old judges. -- Thomas Jefferson
Take more pleasure in giving what is best to another than in having it for yourself, and then all the world will love you. -- Thomas Jefferson
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. -- Thomas Jefferson
no people can be both ignorant and free. -- Thomas Jefferson
No country and no people can be free and ignorant at the same time. -- Thomas Jefferson
Power is not alluring to pure minds. -- Thomas Jefferson
The happiness of the domestic fireside is the first boon of Heaven; and it is well it is so, since it is that which is the lot of the mass of mankind. -- Thomas Jefferson
Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe. -- Thomas Jefferson
I wish I was a despot that I might save the noble, the beautiful trees that are daily falling sacrifice to the cupidity of their owners, or the necessity of the poor. The unnecessary felling of a tree, perhaps the growth of centuries, seems to me a crime little short of murder. -- Thomas Jefferson
The ordinary affairs of a nation offer little difficulty to a person of any experience. -- Thomas Jefferson
It can never be too often repeated, that the time for fixing every essential right on a legal basis is while our rulers are honest, and ourselves united. -- Thomas Jefferson
Not less than two hours a day should be devoted to exercise. -- Thomas Jefferson
Legislators invent too many devices for subdividing property, only taking care to let their subdivisions go hand in hand with the natural affections of the human mind. -- Thomas Jefferson
I do not agree that an age of pleasure is no compensation for a moment of pain. -- Thomas Jefferson
Rejecting all organs of informationbut my senses, I rid myself of the Pyrrhonisms with which an indulgence in speculations hyperphysical and antiphysical so uselessly occupy and disquiet the mind. -- Thomas Jefferson
Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just. -- Thomas Jefferson
I'd prefer to have dangerous freedom,
than have peaceful slavery -- Thomas Jefferson
The human character, we believe, requires in general constant and immediate control to prevent its being biased from right by the seductions of self-love. -- Thomas Jefferson
I served with General Washington in die Legislature of Virginia ... and ... with Doctor Franklin in Congress. I never heard neither of them speak ten minutes at a time, nor to any but the main point. -- Thomas Jefferson
A machine for making revolutions is doing precisely the wrong thing at just the right time. -- Thomas Jefferson
Yet by such worthless beings is a great nation to be governed and even made to deify their old king because he is only a fool and a maniac, and to forgive and forget his having lost to them a great and flourishing empire. -- Thomas Jefferson
I was dupedby the Secretary of the treasury [Alexander Hamilton], and made a fool for forwarding his schemes, not then sufficiently understood by me; and of all the errors of my political life, this has occasioned the deepest regret. -- Thomas Jefferson
The States should be urged to concede to the General Government, with a saving of chartered rights, the exclusive power of establishing banks of discount for paper. -- Thomas Jefferson
One insult pocketed soon produces another. -- Thomas Jefferson
Always take hold of things by the smooth handle. -- Thomas Jefferson
Men of quality are not threatened by women of equality -- Thomas Jefferson
Though [the people] may acquiesce, they cannot approve what they do not understand. -- Thomas Jefferson
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. -- Thomas Jefferson
Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government. -- Thomas Jefferson
If the freedom of religion, guaranteed to us by law in theory, can ever rise in practice under the overbearing inquisition of public opinion, [then and only then will truth]prevail over fanaticism. -- Thomas Jefferson
We must endeavor to forget our former love for them [the British] and to hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends. -- Thomas Jefferson
Government is being founded on opinion, the opinion of the public, even when it is wrong, ought to be respected to a certain degree. -- 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
Nothing but free argument, raillery and even ridicule will preserve the purity of religion. -- Thomas Jefferson
The only security of all is in a free press. -- Thomas Jefferson
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. -- Thomas Jefferson
The sun of her [Great Britain] glory is fast descending to the horizon. Her philosophy has crossed the Channel, her freedom the Atlantic, and herself seems passing to that awful dissolution, whose issue is not given human foresight to scan. -- Thomas Jefferson
I consider him [Alexander von Humboldt] the most important scientist whom I have met. -- Thomas Jefferson
The Bible is the cornerstone of liberty. -- Thomas Jefferson
The cornerstone of democracy rests on the foundation of an educated electorate. -- Thomas Jefferson
I have but one system of ethics for men and for nations - to be grateful, to be faithful to all engagements under all circumstances, to be open and generous, promoting in the long run even the interests of both -- Thomas Jefferson
As we advance in life these things fall off one by one , and I suspect we are left with only Homer and Virgil, perhaps with only Homer alone. -- Thomas Jefferson
I have no ambition to govern men; it is a painful and thankless office. -- Thomas Jefferson
A good cause is often injured more by ill-timed efforts of its friends than by the arguments of its enemies. Persuasion, perseverance and patience are the best advocates on questions depending on the will of others. -- Thomas Jefferson
I do not like [in the new Federal Constitution] the omission of a Bill of Rights providing clearly and without the aid of sophisms for ... protection against standing armies -- Thomas Jefferson
There is not a single crowned head in Europe whose talents or merit would entitle him to be elected a vestryman by the people of any parish in America. -- Thomas Jefferson
If you want something you've never had
You must be willing to do something you've never done. -- Thomas Jefferson
Our bills shall not be killed. -- Thomas Jefferson
A single zealot may commence prosecutor, and better men be his victims. -- Thomas Jefferson
Being myself a warm zealot for the attainment & enjoiment by all mankind of as much liberty as each may exercise without injury to the equal liberty of his fellow citizens, I have lamented that in France the endeavors to obtain this should have been attended with the effusion of so much blood. -- Thomas Jefferson
The mobs of the great cities add just so much to the support of pure government as sores do to the strength of the human body. It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution. -- Thomas Jefferson
No man will ever bring out of that office the reputation which carries him into it. The honeymoon would be as short in that case as in any other, and its moments of ecstasy would be ransomed by years of torment and hatred. -- 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
If I could not go to heaven with but a party, I would not go there at all. Therefore, I am not of the party of federalists. But I am much further from that of the anti-federalists. -- Thomas Jefferson
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. -- Thomas Jefferson
Trade liberty for safety or money and you'll end up with neither. Liberty, like a grain of salt, easily dissolves. The power of questioning - not simply believing - has no friends. Yet liberty depends on it. -- Thomas Jefferson
Music ... This is the favorite passion of my soul. -- Thomas Jefferson
Every experience deeply felt in life needs to be passed along. Wheather it be through words and music, chiseled in stone, painted with a brush, or sewn with a needle, it is a way of reaching for immortality. -- Thomas Jefferson
The mobs of great cities add just so much to the support of pure government as sores do to the strength of the human body. -- Thomas Jefferson
From forty years' experience of the wretched guess-work of the newspapers of what is not done in open daylight, and of their falsehood even as to that, I rarely think them worth reading, and almost never worth notice. -- 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
Certain teachings in the Bible are as diamonds in a dung-heap. -- Thomas Jefferson
Money, not morality, constitutes the principle of commercial nations. -- Thomas Jefferson
Our peculiar security is in the possession of a written Constitution. Let us not make it a blank paper by construction. -- 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
Nothing is more likely than that [the] enumeration of powers is defective. This is the ordinary case of all human works. Let us then go on perfecting it by adding by way of amendment to the Constitution those powers which time and trial show are still wanting -- Thomas Jefferson
I deplore with you the putrid state into which our newspapers have passed, and the malignity, the vulgarity, and mendacious spirit of those who write for them ... This has in a great degree been produced by the violence and malignity of party spirit. -- Thomas Jefferson
We defer therefore till this time twelve month to avail ourselves of the instruction of that place, and particularly of your kindness in the two branches of Botany and Natural history to which we wish him particularly to apply. -- Thomas Jefferson
ONLY a government that is AFRAID of its citizens tries to control them. -- Thomas Jefferson
During the late war I had an infallible rule for deciding what Great Britain would do on every occasion. It was, to consider what they ought to do, and to take the reverse of that as what they would assuredly do, and I can say with truth that I was never deceived. -- Thomas Jefferson
[It is a] happy truth that man is capable of self-government, and only rendered otherwise by the moral degradation designedly superinduced on him by the wicked acts of his tyrant. -- Thomas Jefferson
His [Calvin's] religion was demonism. If ever man worshiped a false God, he did. The being described in his five points is ... a demon of malignant spirit. It would be more pardonable to believe in no God at all, than to blaspheme him by the atrocious attributes of Calvin -- Thomas Jefferson
If ever there was a holy war, it was that which saved our liberties and gave us independence. -- Thomas Jefferson
This is the fourth?
[Last words] -- Thomas Jefferson
Those who bear equally the burthens of Government should equally participate of its benefits. -- Thomas Jefferson
Freedom, the first-born of science. -- Thomas Jefferson
The executive, in our government is not the sole, it is scarcely the principle, object of my jealousy. The tyranny of the legislature is the most formidable dread at present and will be for many years. That of the executive will come in its turn, but it will be at a remote period. -- Thomas Jefferson
Every man is under the natural duty of contributing to the necessities of the society; and this is all the laws should enforce on him. -- Thomas Jefferson
Questions of natural right are triable by their conformity with the moral sense and reason of man. -- Thomas Jefferson
If you are obliged to neglect any thing, let it be your chemistry. It is the least useful and the least amusing to a country gentleman of all the ordinary branches of science. -- Thomas Jefferson
I sincerely pray that all the members of the human family may, in the time prescribed by the Father of us all, find themselves securely established in the enjoyment of life, liberty, and happiness. -- Thomas Jefferson
There is ... an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents ... The artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient in government, and provision should be made to prevent its ascendency. -- 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. -- Thomas Jefferson
It is better to tolerate the rare instance of a parent refusing to let his child be educated, than to shock the common feelings and ideas by forcible asportation and education of the infant against the will of the father. -- Thomas Jefferson
Heliotrope. To be sowed in the spring. A delicious flower, but I suspect it must be planted in boxes and kept in the house in the winter. The smell rewards the care. -- Thomas Jefferson
This is perhaps the most important statement on religion ever made. It clarified the intent of the founders of the constitution irrespective of the attempts of modern day religious revisionists ... -- 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
Paper is poverty, it is only the ghost of money, and not money itself. -- Thomas Jefferson
It is between fifty and sixty years since I read it (i.e. the Book of Revelations), and I then considered it merely the ravings of a maniac, no more worthy nor capable of explanation than the incoherence of our own nightly dreams. -- Thomas Jefferson
Rebellion to tyranny is obedience to God. -- Thomas Jefferson
The constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruption's of time and party, its members would become despots. -- Thomas Jefferson
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our People, and eat out their substance. -- Thomas Jefferson
The moral sense, or conscience, is as much part of a man as his leg or arm. It is given to all in a stronger or weaker degree.. It may be strengthened by exercise. -- Thomas Jefferson
No one more sincerely wishes the spread of information among mankind than I do, and none has greater confidence in it's effect towards supporting free & good government. -- Thomas Jefferson
A right to property is founded in our natural wants, in the means with which we are endowed to satisfy these wants, and the right to what we acquire by those means without violating the similar rights of other sensible beings. -- Thomas Jefferson
If the obstacles of bigotry and priestcraft can be surmounted, we may hope that common sense will suffice to do everything else. -- Thomas Jefferson
Besides the comfort of knowlege, every science is auxiliary to every other. -- Thomas Jefferson
Religion, morality, and knowledge are necessary for good government ... Therefore schools and the means of educating the people should always be encouraged. -- Thomas Jefferson
To consider judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions is a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. -- Thomas Jefferson
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
It is for the benefit of mankind to mitigate the horrors of war as much as possible. -- Thomas Jefferson
Men fight for freedom; then they begin to accumulate laws to take it away from themselves. -- Thomas Jefferson
What is true of every member of the society, individually, is true of them all collectively; since the rights of the whole can be no more than the sum of the rights of the individuals. -- Thomas Jefferson
Law is often the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual. -- Thomas Jefferson
The equal rights of man, and the happiness of every individual, are now acknowledged to be the only legitimate objects of government. -- Thomas Jefferson
Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual. -- Thomas Jefferson
A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for a second; that second for a third; and so on, till the bulk of the society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery, to have no sensibilities left but for sin and suffering. -- Thomas Jefferson
To take a single step beyond the boundaries specially drawn around the powers of Congress is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible to definition. -- Thomas Jefferson
I view great cities as pestilential to the morals, the health, and the liberties of man. -- 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
Lethargy is the forerunner of death to the public liberty. -- 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
No man will labor for himself who can make another labor for him. -- Thomas Jefferson
A cold-blooded, calculation, unprincipled, usurper, without a virtue, no statesman, knowing nothing of commerce, political economy, or civil government, and supplying ignorance by bold presumption. -- Thomas Jefferson
We believe no more in Bonaparte's fighting merely for the liberties of the seas than in Great Britain's fighting for the liberties of mankind. The object is the same, to draw to themselves the power, the wealth and the resources of other nations. -- Thomas Jefferson
[T]o preserve the republican form and principles of our Constitution and cleave to the salutary distribution of powers which that [the Constitution] has established ... are the two sheet anchors of our Union. If driven from either, we shall be in danger of foundering. -- Thomas Jefferson
The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. -- Thomas Jefferson
I have ever deemed it more honorable and more profitable, too, to set a good example than to follow a bad one. -- Thomas Jefferson
It is always better to have no ideas than false ones; to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong. -- Thomas Jefferson
The further the departure from direct and constant control by the citizens, the less has the government of the ingredient of republicanism ... -- Thomas Jefferson
The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do. -- Thomas Jefferson
Honesty, disinterestedness and good nature are indispensable to procure the esteem and confidence of those with whom we live, and on whose esteem our happiness depends. -- Thomas Jefferson
The way to silence religious disputes is to take no notice of them. -- Thomas Jefferson
The order of nature [is] that individual happiness shall be inseparable from the practice of virtue. -- Thomas Jefferson
I have the consolation of having added nothing to my private fortune during my public service, and of retiring with hands clean as they are empty. -- Thomas Jefferson
If we did a good act merely from love of God and a belief that it is pleasing to Him, whence arises the morality of the Atheist? ... Their virtue, then, must have had some other foundation than the love of God. -- Thomas Jefferson
Subject opinion to coercion: whom will you make your inquisitors? Fallible men; men governed by bad passions, by private as well as public reasons. And why subject it to coercion? To produce uniformity. But is uniformity of opinion desirable? No more than of face and stature. -- Thomas Jefferson
Of distinction by birth or badge, [Americans] had no more idea than they had of the mode of existence in the moon or planets. They had heard only that there were such, and knew that they must be wrong. -- Thomas Jefferson
The glow of one warm thought is to me worth more than money -- Thomas Jefferson
The objects of this primary education ... would be ... to form the statesmen, legislators and judges, on whom public prosperity and individual happiness are so much to depend. -- 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
Truth between candid minds can never do harm. -- Thomas Jefferson
Female education ... has occupied my attention so far only as the education of my own daughters ... I thought it essential to give them a solid education which might enable them, when become mothers, to educate their own daughters, and even to direct the course for sons, should their fathers be ... -- Thomas Jefferson
And, in general, that branch which is to act ultimately and without appeal on any law is the rightful expositor of the validity of the law, uncontrolled by the opinions of the other coordinate authorities. -- Thomas Jefferson
The Giver of life gave it for happiness and not for wretchedness. -- Thomas Jefferson
Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains. -- Thomas Jefferson
Victory and defeat are each of the same price. -- Thomas Jefferson
If the children are untaught, their ignorance and vices will in future life cost us much dearer in their consequences than it would have done in their correction by a good education. -- Thomas Jefferson
I think with the Romans, that the general of today should be a soldier tomorrow if necessary. -- Thomas Jefferson
On matters of style, swim with the current, on matters of principle, stand like a rock. -- Thomas Jefferson
Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion. -- Thomas Jefferson
Of all the systems of morality, ancient or modern which have come under my observation, none appears to me so pure as that of Jesus ... I am a real Christian, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus. -- 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
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the atmosphere. -- Thomas Jefferson
Every male citizen of the commonwealth, liable to taxes or to militia duty in any county, shall have a right to vote for representatives for that county to the legislature. -- Thomas Jefferson
Difference of opinion leads to inquiry, and inquiry to the truth. -- Thomas Jefferson
Motherhood is the keystone of the arch of matrimonial happiness. -- Thomas Jefferson
The ground of liberty is to be gained by inches. We must be contented to secure what we can get from time to time and eternally press forward for what is yet to get. It takes time to persuade men to do even what is for their own good. -- Thomas Jefferson
Our ancestors ... possessed a right, which nature has given to all men, of departing from the country in which chance, not choice has placed them. -- Thomas Jefferson
An hereditary aristocracy ... will change the form of our governments from the best to the worst in the world. -- Thomas Jefferson
I like to see the people awake and alert. -- Thomas Jefferson
Those who would trade safety for freedom deserve neither. -- Thomas Jefferson
There is no justification for taking away individuals' freedom in the guise of public safety. -- Thomas Jefferson
The religion of Jesus is founded in the Unity of God, and this principle chiefly gave it triumph over the rabble of heathen gods then acknowledged. Thinking men of all nations rallied readily to the doctrine of one only God, and embraced it with the pure-morals which Jesus inculcated. -- Thomas Jefferson
A Nation's best defense is an educated citizenry -- Thomas Jefferson
All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression. -- Thomas Jefferson
A superintending power to maintain the Universe in its course and order. -- Thomas Jefferson
No government should be without critics. If its intentions are good then it has nothing to fear from criticism. -- 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
Planting is one of my great amusements, and even of those things which can only be for posterity, for a Septuagenary has no right to count on any thing but annuals. -- Thomas Jefferson
Hemp is of first necessity to the wealth & protection of the country. -- Thomas Jefferson
Take painsto write a neat round, plain hand, and you will find it a great convenience through life to write a small and compact hand as well as a fair and legible one. -- Thomas Jefferson
Love your neighbor as yourself, and your country more than yourself. -- Thomas Jefferson
The firmness with which the (American) people have withstood the ... abuses of the press, the discernment they have manifested between truth and falsehood, show that they may safely be trusted to hear everything true and false and to form a correct judgment between them. -- Thomas Jefferson
Walking is the best possible exercise. Habituate yourself to walk very far. -- Thomas Jefferson
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. -- Thomas Jefferson
Agriculture, manufactures, commerce, and navigation, the four pillars of our prosperity, are the most thriving when left most free to individual enterprise. -- Thomas Jefferson
A rigid economy of the public contributions and absolute interdiction of all useless expenses will go far towards keeping the government honest and unoppressive. -- Thomas Jefferson
It is more honorable to repair a wrong than to persist in it. -- 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. -- Thomas Jefferson
Only aim to do your duty, and mankind will give you credit where you fail. -- Thomas Jefferson
It is neither wealth nor splendor, but tranquility and occupation which give happiness. -- Thomas Jefferson
We must use a good deal of economy in our wood, never cutting down new, where we can make the old do. -- Thomas Jefferson
My most earnest wish is to see the republican element of popular control pushed to the maximum of its practicable exercise. I shall then believe that our government may be pure and perpetual. -- Thomas Jefferson
I believe from what I have lately seen that we should be substantially safe were our Citizens Armed, but we have not as many Arms as we have Enemies in the State. -- Thomas Jefferson
That liberty [is pure] which is to go to all, and not to the few or the rich alone. (to Horatio Gates, 1798) -- Thomas Jefferson
A nation, as a society, forms a moral person, and every member of it is personally responsible for his society. -- Thomas Jefferson
Self-love is no part of morality. Indeed it is exactly its counterpart. It is the sole antagonist of virtue leading us constantly by our propensities to self-gratification in violation of our moral duties to others. -- Thomas Jefferson
It is of great importance to set a resolution, not to be shaken, never to tell an untruth. There is no vice so mean, so pitiful, so contemptible; and he who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and a third time, till at length it becomes habitual. -- Thomas Jefferson
One precedent in favor of power is stronger than a hundred against it. -- Thomas Jefferson
Ignorance is a poor tool in a battle of wits. -- Thomas Jefferson
In a republican nation, whose citizens are to be led by reason and persuasion and not by force, the art of reasoning becomes of first importance -- Thomas Jefferson
The Earth is given as a common for men to labor and live in. -- Thomas Jefferson
If virtuous, the government need not fear the fair operation of attack and defense. Nature has given to man no other means of sifting the truth, either in religion, law, or politics. -- Thomas Jefferson
My affections were first for my own country, then, generally, for all mankind -- Thomas Jefferson
I think one travels more usefully when they travel alone, because they reflect more.
(Letter to John Banister, Jr., June 19, 1787) -- Thomas Jefferson
We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed. -- Thomas Jefferson
In every free and deliberating society, there must, from the nature of man, be opposite parties, and violent dissensions and discords; and one of these, for the most part, must prevail over the other for a longer or shorter time. -- Thomas Jefferson
We exist, and are quoted, as standing proofs that a government, so modeled as to rest continually on the will of the whole society, is a practicable government. -- Thomas Jefferson
We seem not to perceive that, by the law of nature, one generation is to another as one independent nation is to another. -- Thomas Jefferson
No generation has a right to contract debts greater than can be paid off during the course of its own existence. -- Thomas Jefferson
The people will not understand the importance of the Second Amendment until it is too late. -- Thomas Jefferson
How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened.
-- Thomas Jefferson
The declaration of rights [Bill of Rights] is, like all other human blessings, alloyed with some inconveniences and not accomplishing fully its object. But the good in this instance vastly outweighs the evil. -- Thomas Jefferson
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
To penetrate and dissipate these clouds of darkness, the general mind must be strengthened by education. -- Thomas Jefferson
If any state in the Union will declare that it prefers separation ... to a continuance in union ... I have no hesitation in saying, 'let us separate. -- Thomas Jefferson
I consider the doctrines of Jesus as delivered by himself to contain the outlines of the sublimest system of morality that has ever been taught but I hold in the most profound detestation and execration the corruptions of it which have been invented ... -- Thomas Jefferson
I have not observed mens honesty to increase with their riches. -- Thomas Jefferson
The excellence of every government is its adaptation to the state of those to be governed by it. -- Thomas Jefferson
What an augmentation of the field for jobbing, speculating, plundering, office-building and office-hunting would be produced by an assumption of all the state powers into the hands of the general government. -- Thomas Jefferson
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. -- Thomas Jefferson
[A]lthough a republican government is slow to move, yet when once in motion, its momentum becomes irresistible. -- Thomas Jefferson
I have ever judged of the religion of others by their lives. For it is in our lives, and not from our works, that our religion must be read. -- Thomas Jefferson
I have learned to be less confident in the conclusions of human reason, and give more credit to the honesty of contrary opinions. -- Thomas Jefferson
Truth is certainly a branch of morality and a very important one to society. -- Thomas Jefferson
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. -- Thomas Jefferson
I cannot live without my books" - -- Thomas Jefferson
In a virtuous and free state, no rewards can be so pleasing to sensible minds, as those which include the approbation of our fellow citizens. My great pain is, lest my poor endeavours should fall short of the kind expectations of my country. -- Thomas Jefferson
Hemp is one of the greatest, most important substances of our nation -- Thomas Jefferson
A morsel of genuine history is a thing so rare as to be always valuable. -- Thomas Jefferson
It is surely time for men to think for themselves, and to throw off the authority of names so artificially magnified. -- Thomas Jefferson
Nothing is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man. -- Thomas Jefferson
Preach, my dear Sir, a crusade against ignorance; establish & improve the law for educating the common people. -- Thomas Jefferson
To learn, you have to listen. To improve, you have to try. -- Thomas Jefferson
The rights of the people to the exercise and fruits of their own industry can never be protected against the selfishness of rulers not subject to their control at short periods. -- Thomas Jefferson
Paper money is liable to be abused, has been, is, and forever will be abused, in every country in which it is permitted. -- Thomas Jefferson
That paper money has some advantages is admitted. But that its abuses also are inevitable and, by breaking up the measure of value, makes a lottery of all private property, cannot be denied. -- Thomas Jefferson
The cement of this union is in the heart blood of every American. I do not believe there is on earth a government established on so immovable a basis. -- Thomas Jefferson
Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances. -- Thomas Jefferson
The persons and property of our citizens are entitled to the protection of our government in all places where they may lawfully go. -- Thomas Jefferson
We could in the United States make as great a variety of wines as are made in Europe, not exactly of the same kinds, but doubtless as good. -- Thomas Jefferson
Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends [life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness] it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government ... -- Thomas Jefferson
It is a cruel thought, that, when we feel ourselves standing on the firmest ground in every respect, the cursed arts of our secret enemies, combining with other causes, should effect, by depreciating our money, what the open arms of a powerful enemy could not. -- Thomas Jefferson
I believe that justice is instinct and innate, that the moral sense is as much a part of our constitution as that of feeling, seeing, or hearing; as a wise Creator must have seen to be necessary in an animal destined to live in society. -- Thomas Jefferson
When you are doubting whether a thing is worth the trouble of going to see, recollect that you will never again be so near it. You may repent not having seen it, but you can never repent having seen it. -- Thomas Jefferson
The moral sense is as much a part of our constitution as that of feeling, seeing, or hearing. -- Thomas Jefferson
I'd rather have newspapers and no government than government and no newspapers. -- Thomas Jefferson
I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it. -- Thomas Jefferson
I find friendship to be like wine, raw when new, ripened with age, the true old man's milk and restorative cordial. -- Thomas Jefferson
This I hope will be the age of experiments in government, and that their basis will be founded in principles of honesty, not of mere force. -- Thomas Jefferson
Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free. Nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion has drawn indelible lines of distinction between them. -- Thomas Jefferson
We did not raise armies for glory or for conquest. -- Thomas Jefferson
There is nothing more unequal than the equal treatment of unequal people. -- Thomas Jefferson
People generally have more feeling for canals and roads than education. However, I hope we can advance them with equal pace. -- Thomas Jefferson
The power of declaring war being with the Legislature, the Executive should do nothing necessarily committing them to decide for war in preference of non-intercourse, which will be preferred by a great many. -- Thomas Jefferson
No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free no one ever will. -- Thomas Jefferson
The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest his (sic)patient in the care of the human frame, in diet and in the cause and prevention of disease -- Thomas Jefferson
But friendship is precious, not only in the shade but in the sunshine of life; & thanks to a benevolent arrangement of things, the greater part of life is sunshine. I will recur for proof to the days we have lately passed. On these indeed the sun shone brightly. -- Thomas Jefferson
For if one link in nature's chain might be lost, another might be lost, until the whole of things will vanish by piecemeal. -- Thomas Jefferson
[My] pillar of support through life ... I can say conscientiously that I do not know in the world a man of purer integrity, more dispassionate, disinterested, and devoted to genuine Republicanism; nor could I in the whole scope of America and Europe point out an abler head. -- Thomas Jefferson
Peace with all nations, and the right which that gives us with respect to all nations, are our object. -- Thomas Jefferson
The time to guard against corruption and tyranny is before they shall have gotten hold of us. It is better to keep the wolf out of the fold, than to trust to drawing his teeth and talons after he shall have entered. -- Thomas Jefferson
Debt and revolution are inseparable as cause and effect. -- Thomas Jefferson
I find as I grow older that I love those most whom I loved first. -- Thomas Jefferson
A democratic society depends upon an informed and educated citizenry. -- Thomas Jefferson
I concur with you strictly in your opinion of the comparative merits of atheism and demonism, and really see nothing but the latter in the being worshipped by many who think themselves Christians. -- Thomas Jefferson
The moral sense is the first excellence of well-organized man. -- Thomas Jefferson
He alone who walks strict and upright, and who, in matters of opinion, will be contented that others should be as free as himself and acquiesce when his opinion is freely overruled, will attain his object in the end. -- Thomas Jefferson
Revenue on the consumption of foreign articles is paid cheerfully by those who can afford to add foreign luxuries to domestic comforts. -- Thomas Jefferson
Error indeed has often prevailed by the assistance of power or force. Truth is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error. -- Thomas Jefferson
Having seen the people of all other nations bowed down to the earth under the wars and prodigalities of their rulers, I have cherished their opposites, peace, economy, and riddance of public debt, believing that these were the high road to public as well as private prosperity and happiness. -- Thomas Jefferson
The present generation has the same right of self-government which the past one has exercised for itself. -- Thomas Jefferson
Where strictness of grammar does not weaken expression, it should be attended to ... But where, by small grammatical negligences, the energy of an idea is condensed, or a word stands for a sentence, I hold grammatical rigor in contempt. -- Thomas Jefferson
We are sensible of the duty and expediency of submitting our opinions to the will of the majority, and can wait with patience till they get right if they happen to be at any time wrong. -- Thomas Jefferson
I shall need, too, the favor of that Being in whose hands we are, who led our forefathers, as Israel of old. -- Thomas Jefferson
When angry count to ten before you speak. If very angry, count to one hundred. -- Thomas Jefferson
The relations which exist between man and his Maker, and the duties resulting from those relations, are the most interesting and important to every human being and the most incumbent on his study and investigation. -- Thomas Jefferson
It is in the love of one's family only that heartfelt happiness is known. -- Thomas Jefferson
Never use one word when two will do. -- Thomas Jefferson
With nations as with individuals our interests soundly calculated will ever be found inseparable from our moral duties. -- Thomas Jefferson
No stile of writing is so delightful as that which is all pith, which never omits a necessary word, nor uses an unnecessary one. -- Thomas Jefferson
We are completely saddled and bridled, and ... the bank is so firmly mounted on us that we must go where it will guide. -- Thomas Jefferson
The spirit of 1776 is not dead. It had only been slumbering. The body of the American people is substantially republican. -- Thomas Jefferson
Honor, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us. -- Thomas Jefferson
No man will ever bring out of the Presidency the reputation which carries him into it. To myself, personally, it brings nothing but increasing drudgery and daily loss of friends. -- Thomas Jefferson
Our properties within our own territories [should not] be taxed or regulated by any power on earth but our own. -- Thomas Jefferson
With respect to our State and federal governments, I do not think their relations correctly understood by foreigners. They generally suppose the former subordinate to the latter. But this is not the case. They are co-ordinate departments of one simple and integral whole. -- Thomas Jefferson
History by apprising them [the people] of the past will enable them to judge of the future ... It will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men: it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume; and knowing it, to defeat its views. -- Thomas Jefferson
Never did a prisoner, released from his chains, feel such relief as I shall on shaking off the shackles of power. -- Thomas Jefferson
No duty the Executive had to perform was so trying as to put the right man in the right place. -- Thomas Jefferson
So inscrutable is the arrangement of causes and consequences in this world, that a two-penny duty on tea, unjustly imposed in a sequestered part of it, changes the condition of all its inhabitants. -- Thomas Jefferson
Travelling is good for your health and necessary for your amusement. -- Thomas Jefferson