Thomas Jefferson Quotes

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

It will be said that great societies cannot exist without government.

Politics is such a torment that I advise everyone I love not to mix with it.

Error indeed has often prevailed by the assistance of power or force. Truth is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error.

the qualifications for self-government in society are not innate. they are the result of habit and long training.

Everyone must act according to the dictates of his own reason.

Always take hold of things by the smooth handle.

... the common law existed while the Anglo-Saxons were yet pagans, at a time when they had never yet heard the name of Christ pronounced or knew that such a character existed.

Let us, then, fellow citizens, unite with one heart and one mind. Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things. And let us reflect that having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled, we have yet gained little if we counternance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of a bitter and bloody persecutions.

We are firmly convinced, and we act on that conviction, that with nations as with individuals our interests soundly calculated will ever be found inseparable from our moral duties, and history bears witness to the fact that a just nation is trusted on its word when recourse is had to armaments and wars to bridle others.

Every man, and every body of men on earth, possesses the right of self-government. They receive it with their being from the hand of nature. Individuals exercise it by their single will; collections of men by that of their majority; for the law of the majority is the natural law of every society of men.

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

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.

Ambition is a tricky little animal to tame. It is very skillful at concealing itself from its master.

Required to be constantly recumbent I write slowly and with difficulty.... Weakened in body by infirmities and in mind by age, now far gone into my 83rd year, reading one newspaper only and forgetting immediately what I read.

If we are made in some degree for others, yet in a greater are we made for ourselves.

A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.

Agriculture, manufactures, commerce, and navigation, the four pillars of our prosperity, are the most thriving when left most free to individual enterprise.

letters are not the first, but the last step in the progression from barbarism to civilisation.

But of all the views of this law [universal education] none is more important, none more legitimate, than that of rendering the people the safe, as they are the ultimate, guardians of their own liberty.

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.

If science produces no better fruits than tyranny... I would rather wish our country to be ignorant, honest and estimable as our neighbouring savages are.

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

I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.

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.

Where everyman is participator in the government of affairs, not merely at an election one day in the year but everyday, he will let the heart be torn out of his body sooner than his power be wrested from him by a Caesar or a Bonaparte.

Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government.

I have done for my country and for all mankind, all that I could do, and I now resign my soul, without fear, to my God - my daughter to my country.

the study of the law is useful in a variety of points of view. it qualifies a man to be useful to himself, to his neighbors, & to the public.

Good wine is a necessity of life for me.

The oppressed should rebel, and they will continue to rebel and raise disturbance until their civil rights are fully restored to them and all partial distinctions, exlusions, and incapacitations are removed.

The fact is that one new idea leads to another, that to a third and so on through a course of time, until someone, with whom no one of these ideas was original, combines all together, and produces what is justly called a new invention.

The dead should not rule the living

Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind.

The best defense of democracy is an informed electorate.

[States and the Federal government are] coordinate departments of one simple and integral whole... The one is the domestic, the other the foreign branch of the same government.

I can never join Calvin in addressing his god. He was indeed an Atheist, which I can never be; or rather his religion was Daemonism. If ever man worshipped a false god, he did.

A superintending power to maintain the Universe in its course and order.

The division into whig and tory is founded in the nature of men; the weakly and nerveless, the rich and the corrupt, seeing more safety and accessibility in a strong executive; the healthy, firm, and virtuous, feeling confidence in their physical and moral resources, and willing to part with only so much power as is necessary for their good government; and, therefore, to retain the rest in the hands of the many, the division will substantially be into Whig and Tory.

I fancy it must be the quantity of animal food eaten by the English which renders their character insusceptible to civilization. I suspect it is in their kitchens and not in their churches that the reformation must be worked.

In defense of our persons and properties under actual violation, we took up arms. When that violence shall be removed, when hostilities shall cease on the part of the aggressors, hostilities shall cease on our part also.

If a sect arises whose tenets would subvert morals, good sense has fair play and reasons and laughs it out of doors without suffering the State to be troubled with it.

Not for ourselves alone, but for all humanity... Let us hasten to find the path that leads to liberty, safety, and peace for everyone.

Men of quality are not threatened by women of equality

Leave no authority existing not responsible to the people.

We shall all consider ourselves unauthorized to saddle posterity with our debts, and morally bound to pay them ourselves; and consequently within what may be deemed the period of a generation, or the life of the majority.

Trial by jury is part of the bright constellation which leads to peace, liberty and safety.

Above all I hope that the education of the common people will be attended to so they won't forget the basic principles of freedom.