Thomas Jefferson Quotes

Man once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind. With such persons, gullibility, which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason, and the mind becomes a wreck.

When habit has strengthened our sense of duties, they leave us no time for other things; but when young we neglect them and this gives us time for anything.

I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a moneyed aristocracy that has set the Government at defiance. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs.

One single object . . . [will merit] the endless gratitude of the society: that of restraining the judges from usurping legislation.

All men are created equal.

The movements of nature are in a never ending circle. The animal species which has once been put into a train of motion, is still probably moving in that train. For if one link in nature's chain might be lost, another and another might be lost, till this whole system of things should evanish by piece-meal; a conclusion not warranted by the local disappearance of one or two species of animals, and opposed by the thousands and thousands of instances of the renovating power constantly exercised by nature for the reproduction of all her subjects, animal, vegetable, and mineral.

Those who wish to be ignorant and free, believe in something that never was and never shall be.

Every man is under the natural duty of contributing to the necessities of the society; and this is all the laws should enforce on him.

A lottery is a salutary instrument and a tax... laid on the willing only, that is to say, on those who can risk the price of a ticket without sensible injury, for the possibility of a higher prize.

If your letters are as long as the bible, they will appear short to me. Only let them be brim full of affection.

Convinced that the people are the only safe depositories of their own liberty, and that they are not safe unless enlightened to a certain degree, I have looked on our present state of liberty as a short-lived possession unless the mass of the people could be informed to a certain degree.

[I]n Great-Britain it is said that their constitution relies on the house of commons for honesty, and the lords for wisdom; whichwould be a rational reliance if honesty were to be bought with money, and if wisdom were hereditary.

May I never get too busy in my own affairs that I fail to respond to the needs of others with kindness and compassion.

If the children are untaught, their ignorance and vices will in future life cost us much dearer in their consequences than it would have done in their correction by a good education.

History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.

The way to silence religious disputes is to take no notice of them.

[Oppose] with manly firmness [any] invasions on the rights of the people.

The policy of the American government is to leave their citizens free, neither restraining nor aiding them in their pursuits.

The man who would choose security over freedom deserves neither.

The natural aristocracy I consider as the most precious gift of nature for the instruction, the trusts, and government of society. And indeed it would have been inconsistent in creation to have formed man for the social state, and not to have provided virtue and wisdom enough to manage the concerns of the society. May we not even say that that form of government is the best which provides the most - for a pure selection of these natural aristoi into the offices of government?

The Christian god is a being of terrific character - cruel, vindictive, capricious and unjust.

I am a Christian in the only sense in which He wished anyone to be: sincerely attached to His doctrines in preference to all others.

My confidence is that there will for a long time be virtue and good sense enough in our countrymen to correct abuses.

Great innovations should not be forced on slender majorities.

Books may be classed from the Faculties of the mind

I find that he is happiest of whom the world says least, good or bad.

I am never tempted to pray but when a warm feeling for my friends comes athwart my heart.

... I am not afraid of priests. They have tried upon me all their various batteries of pious whining, hypocritical canting, lying and slandering. I have contemplated their order from the Magi of the East to the Saints of the West and I have found no difference of character, but of more or less caution, in proportion to their information or ignorance on whom their interested duperies were to be played off. Their sway in New England is indeed formidable. No mind beyond mediocrity dares there to develop itself.

This is perhaps the most important statement on religion ever made. It clarified the intent of the founders of the constitution irrespective of the attempts of modern day religious revisionists.

A nation, as a society, forms a moral person, and every member of it is personally responsible for his society.

‎We must make our choice between economy and liberty or confusion and servitude...If we run into such debts, we must be taxed in our meat and drink, in our necessities and comforts, in our labor and in our amusements...if we can prevent the government from wasting the labor of the people, under the pretense of caring for them, they will be happy.

Lethargy is the forerunner of death to the public liberty.

Don't spend your money till you have it.

No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another; and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him.

The President is bound to stop at the limits prescribed by our Constitution and law to the authorities in his hands, [and this] would apply in an occasion of peace as well as war.

It is true that in the meantime we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public debt.

If ever this vast country is brought under a single government, it will be one of the most extensive corruption, indifferent and incapable of a wholesome care over so wide a spread of surface. This will not be borne, and you will have to choose between reform and revolution. If I know the spirit of this country, the one or the other is inevitable.

God grant that men of principle shall be our principal men.

War has been avoided from a due sense of the miseries, and the demoralization it produces, and of the superior blessings of a state of peace and friendship with all mankind.

My opinion is that there would never have been an infidel, if there had never been a priest. The artificial structures they have built on the purest of all moral systems, for the purpose of deriving from it pence and power, revolts those who think for themselves, and who read in that system only what is really there.

By oft repeating an untruth, men come to believe it themselves.

To the corruptions of Christianity I am indeed opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself.

There are two subjects, indeed, which I shall claim a right to further as long as I breathe: the public education, and the sub-division of counties into wards. I consider the continuance of republican government as absolutely hanging on these two hooks.

If you have any duty which must be done, and it seems disagreeable, do it promptly and have it over.

Government as well as religion has furnished its schisms, its persecutions and its devices for fattening idleness on the earnings of the people.

Nature intended me for the tranquil pursuits of science by rendering them my supreme delight.

The constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruption's of time and party, its members would become despots.

Does the government fear us? Or do we fear the government? When the people fear the government, tyranny has found victory. The federal government is our servant, not our master!