Thomas Jefferson Quotes

Our country is too large to have all its affairs directed by a single government. Public servants at such a distance, and from under the eye of their constituents, must, from the circumstance of distance, be unable to administer and overlook all the details necessary for the good government of the citizens; and the same circumstance, by rendering detection impossible to their constituents, will invite public agents to corruption, plunder and waste.

~ Thomas Jefferson

No government ought to be without censors, and where the press is free no one ever will.

~ Thomas Jefferson

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. ... But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security...

~ 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

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

~ 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

The main objects of all science, the freedom and happiness of man. . . . [are] the sole objects of all legitimate government.(A plaque with this quotation, with the first phrase omitted, is in the stairwell of the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty.)

~ 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

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

To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. Tosay that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is tosay they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels,no soul. I cannot reason otherwise .. . without plunginginto the fathomless abyss of dreams and phantasms. I amsatisfied, and sufficiently occupied with the things whichare, without tormenting or troubling myself aboutthose which may indeed be, but of which I have noevidence.

~ Thomas Jefferson

Question with boldness even the existence of aGod; because, if there be one, he must more approve ofthe homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.

~ Thomas Jefferson

It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.

~ 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

Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion.

~ Thomas Jefferson

Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitudefrom achieving his goal.Nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong attitude.

~ Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson asked himself “In what country on earth would you rather live ” He first answered “Certainly in my own where are all my friends my relations and the earliest and sweetest affections and recollections of my life.” But he continued “which would be your second choice ” His answer “France.

~ Thomas Jefferson

Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst, and cold.

~ 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

Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.

~ Thomas Jefferson

Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error.

~ 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

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

~ Thomas Jefferson

I am conscious that an equal division of property is impracticable. But the consequences of this enormous inequality [in Europe] producing so much misery to the bulk of mankind, legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property,...[One] means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise.

~ Thomas Jefferson

Whenever there is in any country, uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labour and live on. If, for the encouragement of industry we allow it to be appropriated, we must take care that other employment be furnished to those excluded from the appropriation. If we do not the fundamental right to labour the earth returns to the unemployed.

~ Thomas Jefferson

Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state.

~ 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

Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment

~ Thomas Jefferson

It is an axiom in my mind, that our liberty can never be safe but in the hands of the people themselves, and that too of the people with a certain degree of instruction. This it is the business of the State to effect, and on a general plan.

~ 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

We have the wolf by the ears; and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.

~ Thomas Jefferson

...vast accession of strength from their younger recruits, who having nothing in them of the feelings or principles of ’76 now look to a single and splendid government of an Aristocracy, founded on banking institutions and monied in corporations under the guise and cloak of their favored branches of manufactures commerce and navigation, riding and ruling over the plundered ploughman and beggared yeomanry.

~ Thomas Jefferson

He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation.

~ Thomas Jefferson

The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ... What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

~ 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

A Decalogue of Canons for Observation in Practical Life:1. Never put off to tomorrow what you can do to-day.2. Never trouble another with what you can do yourself.3. Never spend your money before you have it.4. Never buy a thing you do not want, because it is cheap, it will be dear to you.5. Take care of your cents: Dollars will take care of themselves.6. Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst and cold.7. We never repent of having eat too little.8. Nothing is troublesome that one does willingly.9. How much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened.10. Take things always by their smooth handle.11. Think as you please, and so let others, and you will have no disputes.12. When angry, count 10. before you speak; if very angry, 100.

~ Thomas Jefferson

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

~ Thomas Jefferson

Nothing was or is farther from my intentions, than to enlist myself as the champion of a fixed opinion, where I have only expressed doubt.

~ Thomas Jefferson

All are dead, and ourselves left alone amidst a new generation whom we know not, and who know us not.

~ Thomas Jefferson

I consider him [Alexander von Humboldt] the most important scientist whom I have met.

~ Thomas Jefferson

The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading subjugation on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it: for man is an imitative animal.

~ Thomas Jefferson