Thomas Jefferson Quotes

Religions are all the same...Based upon legends and fantasies

That these are our grievances which we have thus laid before his majesty, with that freedom of language and sentiment which becomes a free people claiming their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.

Experience has taught me that manufacturers are now as necessary to our independence as to our comfort.

Every male citizen of the commonwealth, liable to taxes or to militia duty in any county, shall have a right to vote for representatives for that county to the legislature.

Unmerited abuse wounds, while unmerited praise has not the power to heal.

He who knows best knows how little he knows.

Nothing but good can result from an exchange of information and opinions between those whose circumstances and morals admit no doubt of the integrity of their views.

No instance exists of a person's writing two language perfectly. That will always appear to be his native language which was most familiar to him in his youth.

A true patriot will defend his country from its government.

A schism has taken place among the chemists. A particular set of them in France have undertaken to remodel all the terms of the science, and to give every substance a new name, the composition, and especially the termination of which, shall define the relation in which it stands to other substances of the same family.

I may grow rich by an art I am compelled to follow; I may recover health by medicines I am compelled to take against my own judgment; but I cannot be saved by a worship I disbelieve and abhor.

Knowing that religion does not furnish grosser bigots than law, I expect little from old judges.

A democratic society depends upon an informed and educated citizenry.

The soil is the gift of God to the living.

But, you may ask, if the two departments [i.e., federal and state] should claim each the same subject of power, where is the common umpire to decide ultimately between them? In cases of little importance or urgency, the prudence of both parties will keep them aloof from the questionable ground; but if it can neither be avoided nor compromised, a convention of the States must be called to ascribe the doubtful power to that department which they may think best.

Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.

The proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right.

The true theory of our Constitution is surely the wisest and best, that the states are independent as to everything within themselves and united as to everything respecting foreign nations. Let the general government be reduced to foreign concerns only.

I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.

And even should the cloud of barbarism and despotism again obscure the science and libraries of Europe, this country remains to preserve and restore light and liberty to them.

If we suffer ourselves to be frightened from our post by mere lying, surely the enemy will use that weapon; for what one so cheap to those of whose system of politics morality makes no part?

I would observe to you that what is called style in writing or speaking is formed very early in life while the imagination is warm, and impressions are permanent.

Of publishing a book on religion, my dear sir, I never had an idea. I should as soon think of writing for the reformation of Bedlam, as of the world of religious sects. Of these there must be, at least, ten thousand, every individual of every one of which believes all wrong but his own.

Who then can so softly bind up the wound of another as he who has felt the same wound himself.

Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.

Man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous. . . .

A generation may bind itself as long as its majority continues in life; when that has disappeared, another majority is in place, holds all the rights and powers their predecessors once held, and may change their laws and institutions to suit themselves. Nothing then is unchangeable but the inherent and inalienable rights of man.

Malice will always find bad motives for good actions. - Shall we therefore never do good?

A government regulating itself by what is wise and just for the many, uninfluenced by the local and selfish views of the few who direct their affairs, has not been seen, perhaps, on earth. Or if it existed for a moment at the birth of ours, it would not be easy to fix the term of its continuance. Still, I believe it does exist here in a greater degree than anywhere else; and for its growth and continuance... I offer sincere prayers.

I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master.

I am a sect by myself, as far as I know.

A professorship of Theology should have no place in our institution [the University of Virginia]

The excellence of every government is its adaptation to the state of those to be governed by it.

Was the government to prescribe to us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are now.

The more a subject is understood, the more briefly it may be explained.

Wine from long habit has become an indispensable for my health

History has informed us that bodies of men as well as individuals are susceptible of the spirit of tyranny.

To make us one nation as to foreign concerns, and keep us distinct in Domestic ones gives the outline of the proper division of powers between the general [national] and particular [state] governments.

Men are disposed to live honestly, if the means of doing so are open to them.

I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and Constitutions. But laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.

Those who labour in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen, people, whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue.

I have sworn upon the altar of god.

If I could not go to heaven with but a party, I would not go there at all. Therefore, I am not of the party of federalists. But I am much further from that of the anti-federalists.

The cost of freedom is eternal vigilance

Whenever you are to do a thing, though it can never be known but to yourself, ask yourself how you would act were all the world looking at you, and act accordingly.

The opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction; that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency is a dangerous falacy, which at once destroys all religious liberty...

In Europe the object is to make the most of their land, labour being abundant: here it is to make the most of our labour, land being abundant.

The love of justice and the love of country plead equally the cause of these people, and it is a moral reproach to us that they should have pleaded it so long in vain.