Thomas Jefferson Quotes

I'm a greater believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it

~ 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

It be urged that the wild and uncultivated tree, hitherto yielding sour and bitter fruit only, can never be made to yield better; yet we know that the grafting art implants a new tree on the savage stock, producing what is most estimable in kind and degree. Education, in like manner, engrafts a new man on the native stock, and improves what in his nature was vicious and perverse into qualities of virtue and social worth.

~ Thomas Jefferson

[n regard to Jesus believing himself inspired]This belief carried no more personal imputation than the belief of Socrates that he was under the care and admonition of a guardian demon. And how many of our wisest men still believe in the reality of these inspirations while perfectly sane on all other subjects (Works, Vol. iv, p. 327).

~ Thomas Jefferson

But every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle.

~ Thomas Jefferson

Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle.

~ Thomas Jefferson

Whereas it appeareth that however certain forms of government are better calculated than others to protect individuals in the free exercise of their natural rights, and are at the same time themselves better guarded against degeneracy, yet 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, ....whence it becomes expedient for promoting the publick happiness that those persons, whom nature hath endowed with genius and virtue, should be rendered by liberal education worthy to receive, and able to guard the sacred deposit of the rights and liberties of their fellow citizens, and that they should be called to that charge without regard to wealth, birth or accidental condition of circumstance.

~ Thomas Jefferson

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

~ Thomas Jefferson

Nature intended me for the tranquil pursuits of science, by rendering them my supreme delight. But the enormities of the times in which I have lived, have forced me to take a part in resisting them, and to commit myself on the boisterous ocean of political passions.

~ Thomas Jefferson

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

~ Thomas Jefferson

When describing the University of Virginia: Here, We are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.

~ Thomas Jefferson

When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.

~ Thomas Jefferson

He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it the second time.

~ Thomas Jefferson

All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth that 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. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollection of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.

~ Thomas Jefferson

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. 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 to 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.

~ 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

That government is best which governs the least because its people discipline themselves.

~ Thomas Jefferson

I do not take a single newspaper nor read one a month and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it.

~ Thomas Jefferson

When we see ourselves in a situation which must be endured and gone through it is best to make up our minds to meet it with firmness and accommodate everything to it in the best way practical. This lessons the evil while fretting and fuming only serve to increase your own torments.

~ Thomas Jefferson

No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any.

~ Thomas Jefferson

I steer my bark with hope in my heart leaving fear astern.

~ Thomas Jefferson

I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.

~ Thomas Jefferson

No nation is drunken where wine is cheap and none sober where the dearness of wine substitutes ardent spirits as the common beverage. It is in truth the only antidote to the bane of whiskey.

~ Thomas Jefferson

I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.

~ Thomas Jefferson

I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be.

~ Thomas Jefferson

One loves to possess arms, though they hope never to have occasion for them.

~ Thomas Jefferson

The glow of one warm thought is to me worth more than money.

~ Thomas Jefferson

I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.

~ 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

The most successful war seldom pays for its losses.

~ Thomas Jefferson

War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses.

~ Thomas Jefferson

The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind.

~ Thomas Jefferson

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

~ Thomas Jefferson

There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me.

~ 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

In every country and every age, the priest had been hostile to Liberty.

~ 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.

~ Thomas Jefferson

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

~ 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

It is neither wealth nor splendor but tranquility and occupation which give you happiness.

~ Thomas Jefferson