Thomas Jefferson Quotes

I have always said that a studious perusal of the sacred volume will make better citizens, better fathers, and better husbands.

I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.

the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.

The truth is that the want of common education with us is not from our poverty, but from the want of an orderly system. More money is now paid for the education of a part than would be paid for that of the whole if systematically arranged.

The ocean ... like the air, is the common birth-right of mankind.

No other depositories of power [but the people themselves] have ever yet been found, which did not end in converting to their own profit the earnings of those committed to their charge.

The parties of Whig and Tory are those of nature. They exist in all countries, whether called by these names or by those of Aristocrats and Democrats, Cote Droite and Cote Gauche, Ultras and Radicals, Serviles and Liberals. 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.

Self-interest, or rather self-love, or egoism, has been more plausibly substituted as the basis of morality.

Exercise and application produce order in our affairs, health of body, cheerfulness of mind, and these make us precious to our friends

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

No person shall be restrained of his liberty but by regular process from a court of justice, authorized by a general law. . . . On complaint of an unlawful imprisonment to any judge whatsoever, he shall have the prisoner immediately brought before him and shall discharge him if his imprisonment be unlawful. The officer in whose custody the prisoner is shall obey the order of the judge, and both judge and officer shall be responsible civilly and criminally for a failure of duty herein.

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.

Our ancestors ... were laborers, not lawyers.

But this momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror.

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.

MORAL LAW, Evidence of.- Man has been subjected by his Creator to the moral law, of which his feelings, or conscience as it is sometimes called, are the evidence with which his Creator has furnished him. ... The moral duties which exist between individual and individual in a state of nature, accompany them into a state of society ... their Maker not having released them from those duties on their forming themselves into a nation.

The reflections that the boys of this age are to be the men of the next; that they should be prepared to receive the holy charge which we are cherishing to deliver over to them; that in establishing an institution of wisdom for them, we secure it to all our future generations; that in fulfilling this duty, we bring home to our own bosoms the sweet consolation of seeing our sons rising under a luminous tuition, to destinies of high promise; these are considerations which will occur to all.

To unequal privileges among members of the same society the spirit of our nation is, with one accord, adverse.

To instruct the mass of our citizens in these, their rights, interests and duties, as men and citizens...this brings us to the point at which are to commence the higher branches of education . . . . To develop the reasoning faculties of our youth, enlarge their minds, cultivate their morals, and instill into them the precepts of virtue and order.

Having labored faithfully in establishing the right of self-government, we see in the rising generation, into whose hands it is passing, that purity of principle and energy of character which will protect and preserve it through their day, and deliver it over to their sons as they receive it from their fathers.

The wise know too well their weakness to assume infallibility; and he who knows most knows best how little he knows.

We are completely saddled and bridled, and... the bank is so firmly mounted on us that we must go where it will guide.

music, drawing, books, invention & exercise will be so many resources to you against ennui.

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.

Paper money is liable to be abused, has been, is, and forever will be abused, in every country in which it is permitted.

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

Laws that forbid the carrying of arms . . . disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes . . . Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.

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

All authority belongs to the people... In questions of power let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief with chains of the Constitution.

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

The happiest moments my heart knows are those in which it is pouring forth its affections to a few esteemed characters.

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.

The spirit of 1776 is not dead. It has only been slumbering. The body of the American people is substantially republican. But their virtuous feelings have been played on by some fact with more fiction; they have been the dupes of artful maneuvers, and made for a moment to be willing instruments in forging chains for themselves. But times and truth dissipated the delusion, and opened their eyes.

He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.

An enlightened citizenry is indispensable for the proper functioning of a republic. Self-government is not possible unless the citizens are educated sufficiently to enable them to exercise oversight. It is therefore imperative that the nation see to it that a suitable education be provided for all its citizens.

In a world which furnishes so many employments which are useful, and so many which are amusing, it is our own fault if we ever know what ennui [boredom] is, or if we are ever driven to the miserable resource of gaming, which corrupts our dispositions, and teaches us a habit of hostility against all mankind.

If the obstacles of bigotry and priestcraft can be surmounted, we may hope that common sense will suffice to do everything else.

Courts love the people always, as wolves do the sheep.

The metaphysical insanities of Athanasius, of Loyola, and of Calvin, are, to my understanding, mere lapses into polytheism, differing from paganism only by being more unintelligible.

None but an armed nation can dispense with a standing army

Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free.

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.

We should talk over the lessons of the day, or lose them in Music, Chess, or the merriments of our family companions.

History, in general, only informs us of what bad government is.

No generation has a right to contract debts greater than can be paid off during the course of its own existence.

It has also been a great solace to me, to believe that you are engaged in vindicating to posterity the course we have pursued for preserving to them, in all their purity, the blessings of self-government, which we had assisted too in acquiring for them. If ever the earth has beheld a system of administration conducted with a single and steadfast eye to the general interest and happiness of those committed to it, one which, protected by truth, can never know reproach, it is that to which our lives have been devoted.

The fumes of the most disordered imaginations were recorded in their religious code, as special communications of the Deity; and as it could not but happen that, in the course of ages, events would now and then turn up to which some of these vague rhapsodies might be accommodated by the aid of allegories, figures, types, and other tricks upon words, they have not only preserved their credit with the Jews of all subsequent times, but are the foundation of much of the religions of those who have schismatised from them.

Most men die at age 25, but aren't buried until 70.