Thomas Jefferson Quotes

Nothing but free argument, raillery and even ridicule will preserve the purity of religion.

Let our countrymen know that the people alone can protect us against these evils of misgovernment.

The majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society.

While old men feel sensibly enough their own advance in years, they do not sufficiently recollect it in those whom they have seenyoung.

Say nothing of my religion. It is known to God and myself alone.

I... [proposed] three distinct grades of education, reaching all classes. 1. Elementary schools for all children generally, rich and poor. 2. Colleges for a middle degree of instruction, calculated for the common purposes of life and such as should be desirable for all who were in easy circumstances. And 3d. an ultimate grade for teaching the sciences generally and in their highest degree... The expenses of [the elementary] schools should be borne by the inhabitants of the county, every one in proportion to his general tax-rate. This would throw on wealth the education of the poor.

Bind them down by the chains of the Constitution where they can do no mischief.

I shall often go wrong through defect of judgment. When right, I shall often be thought wrong by those whose positions will not command a view of the whole ground. I ask your indulgence for my own errors, which will never be intentional, and your support against the errors of others, who may condemn what they would not if seen in all its parts.

The most sacred of the duties of a government [is] to do equal and impartial justice to all its citizens.

If it is believed that these elementary schools will be better managed by the governor and council or any other general authority of the government, than by the parents within each ward, it is a belief against all experience.

Merchants have no country.

The law for religious freedom... [has]put down the aristocracy of the clergy and restored to the citizen the freedom of the mind.

If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour?

Debt and revolution are inseparable as cause and effect.

Every Christian sect gives a great handle to Atheism by their general dogma that, without a revelation, there would not be sufficient proof of the being of god.

The executive, in our government is not the sole, it is scarcely the principle, object of my jealousy. The tyranny of the legislature is the most formidable dread at present and will be for many years. That of the executive will come in its turn, but it will be at a remote period.

When you abandon freedom to achieve security, you lose both and deserve neither.

Public offices were not made for private convenience.

Peace is our passion.

If anything pass in a religious meeting seditiously and contrary to the public peace, let it be punished in the same manner and no otherwise than as if it had happened in a fair or market.

If ignorance is bliss, why aren't more people happy?

I hope we shall . . . crush in [its] birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations.

I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens who, reading newspapers, live and die in the belief that they have known something of what has been passing in their times.

I sincerely congratulate you on the arrival of the mockingbird. Learn all the children to venerate it as a superior being in the form of a bird, or as a being which will haunt them if any harm is done to itself or its eggs.

The press is the best instrument for enlightening the mind of man, and improving him as a rational, moral and social being

To history therefore I must refer for answer, in which it would be an unhappy passage indeed, which should shew by what fatal indulgence of subordinate views and passions, a contest for an atom had defeated well founded prospects of giving liberty to half the globe.

Man is fed with fables through life, and leaves it in the belief he knows something of what has been passing, when in truth he knows nothing but what has passed under his own eyes.

Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto.

Truth can stand by itself...If there be but one right [religion], and [Christianity] that one, we should wish to see the nine hundred and ninety-nine wandering sects gathered into the fold of truth.

The two principles on which our conduct towards the Indians should be founded are justice and fear. After the injuries we have done them, they cannot love us.

The States should be urged to concede to the General Government, with a saving of chartered rights, the exclusive power of establishing banks of discount for paper.

It is an insult to our citizens to question whether they are rational beings or not, and blasphemy against religion to suppose it cannot stand the test of truth and reason.

A good neighbor is a very desireable thing.

I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the atmosphere.

Old heads as well as young may sometimes be charged with ignorance and presumption. The natural course of the human mind is certainly from credulity to skepticism.

The day is not distant when we must bear and adopt [the abolition of slavery], or worse will follow.

Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise, in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour?

Chemistry is yet, indeed, a mere embryon. Its principles are contested; experiments seem contradictory; their subjects are so minute as to escape our senses; and their result too fallacious to satisfy the mind. It is probably an age too soon to propose the establishment of a system.

Knowledge indeed is a desirable, a lovely possession.

One never really knows how much one has been touched by a place until one has left it.

An informed citizenry is the only true repository of the public will.

The advocate of religious freedom is to expect neither peace nor forgiveness from [the clergy].

If ever this vast country is brought under a single government, it will be one of the most extensive corruption.

We need a revolution every 20 years just to keep government honest.

Time indeed changes manners and notions, and so far we must expect institutions to bend to them. But time produces also corruption of principles, and against this it is the duty of good citizens to be ever on the watch, and if the gangrene is to prevail at last, let the day be kept off as long as possible.

We have no paupers ... The great mass of our [United States] population is of laborers; our rich, who can live without labor, either manual or professional, being few, and of moderate wealth. Most of the laboring class possess property, cultivate their own lands, have families, and from the demand for their labor are enabled to exact from the rich and the competent such prices as enable them to be fed abundantly, clothed above mere decency, to labor moderately and raise their families. ... Can any condition of society be more desirable than this?

I join you therefore in branding as cowardly the idea that the human mind is incapable of further advances.

All men are created equal and have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.