Thomas Jefferson Quotes

The good opinion of mankind, like the lever of Archimedes, with the given fulcrum, moves the world.
Thomas Jefferson

The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as they are injurious to others.
Thomas Jefferson

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

The most successful war seldom pays for its losses.
Thomas Jefferson

The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two wordswhen one will do.
Thomas Jefferson

The natural cause of the human mind is certainly from credulity to skepticism.
Thomas Jefferson

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.
Thomas Jefferson

The second office in the government is honorable and easy; the first is but a splendid misery.
Thomas Jefferson

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.
Thomas Jefferson

The spirit of this country is totally adverse to a large military force.
Thomas Jefferson

The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.
Thomas Jefferson

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
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 submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it.
Thomas Jefferson

The world is indebted for all triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression.
Thomas Jefferson

There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents.
Thomas Jefferson

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

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

Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of 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

To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.
Thomas Jefferson

To myself, personally, it brings nothing but increasing drudgery and daily loss of friends.
Thomas Jefferson

To preserve our independence... We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude.
Thomas Jefferson

Truth is certainly a branch of morality and a very important one to society.
Thomas Jefferson

Walking is the best possible exercise. Habituate yourself to walk very fast.
Thomas Jefferson

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

We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed.
Thomas Jefferson

We confide in our strength, without boasting of it; we respect that of others, without fearing it.
Thomas Jefferson

We did not raise armies for glory or for conquest.
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

We may consider each generation as a distinct nation, with a right, by the will of its majority, to bind themselves, but none to bind the succeeding generation, more than the inhabitants of another country.
Thomas Jefferson

We never repent of having eaten too little.
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

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

When a man assumes a public trust he should consider himself a public property.
Thomas Jefferson

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

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

When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe.
Thomas Jefferson

When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on.
Thomas Jefferson

Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct.
Thomas Jefferson

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

Whenever you do a thing, act as if all the world were watching.
Thomas Jefferson

Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.
Thomas Jefferson

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