Thomas Jefferson Quotes

Bigotry is the disease of ignorance, of morbid minds; enthusiasm of the free and buoyant. Education and free discussion are the antidotes of both.

The rights [to religious freedom] are of the natural rights of mankind, and ... if any act shall be ... passed to repeal [an act granting those rights] or to narrow its operation, such act will be an infringement of natural right.

People generally have more feeling for canals and roads than education. However, I hope we can advance them with equal pace.

With earnest prayers to all my friends to cherish mutual good will, to promote harmony and conciliation, and above all things to let the love of our country soar above all minor passions, I tender you the assurance of my affectionate esteem and respect.

The whole body of the nation is the sovereign legislative, judiciary, and executive power for itself. The inconvenience of meeting to exercise these powers in person, and their inaptitude to exercise them, induce them to appoint special organs to declare their legislative will, to judge and to execute it. It is the will of the nation which makes the law obligatory.

When the course of events shall have removed you to distant scenes of action where laurels not nurtured with the blood of my country may be gathered, I shall urge sincere prayers for your obtaining every honor and preferment which may gladden the heart of a soldier.

We figure great careers aren't made. They're experienced.

Do not neglect your music. It will be a companion which will sweeten many hours of life to you.

Question with boldness even the existence of a god.

When two parties make a compact, there results to each a power of compelling the other to execute it.

The most effective means of preventing tyranny is to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large, and more especially to give them knowledge of those facts.

ONLY a government that is AFRAID of its citizens tries to control them.

The price of barbecue is eternal vigilance.

I shall need, too, the favor of that Being in whose hands we are, who led our forefathers, as Israel of old.

Every people may establish what form of government they please, and change it as they please, the will of the nation being the only thing essential.

Truth and reason are eternal. They have prevailed. And they will eternally prevail; however, in times and places they may be overborne for a while by violence, military, civil, or ecclesiastical.

Liberty is to the collective body, what health is to every individual body. Without health no pleasure can be tasted by man; without liberty, no happiness can be enjoyed by society.

The fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follow that, and in its turn wretchedness and oppression.

Our minds and hearts are free to believe everything or nothing at all - and it is our duty to protect and perpetuate this sacred culture of freedom.

The ground of liberty is to be gained by inches, and we must be contented to secure what we can get from time to time and eternally press forward for what is yet to get. It takes time to persuade men to do even what is for their own good.

The Earth is given as a common for men to labor and live in.

The most effectual means of preventing the perversion of power into tyranny are to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large, and more especially to give them knowledge of those facts which history exhibits, that possessed thereby of the experience of other ages and countries, they may be enabled to know ambition under all its shapes, and prompt to exert their natural powers to defeat its purposes.

Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy, and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it.

I am a real Christian, that is to say, a cisciple of the doctrines of Jesus. I have little doubt that our whole country will soon be rallied to the unity of our Creator.

You have lived longer than I have and perhaps may have formed a different judgment on better grounds; but my observations do not enable me to say I think integrity the characteristic of wealth. In general I believe the decisions of the people, in a body, will be more honest and more disinterested than those of wealthy men.

If the measures which have been pursued are approved by the majority, it is the duty of the minority to acquiesce and conform.

It is (our) duty . . . to pay especial attention to the principles of government which shall be inculcated therein (at the University), and to provide that none shall be inculcated which are incompatible with those on which the Constitutions of this State, and of the United States were genuinely based, in the common opinion; and for this purpose it may be necessary to point out specially where these principles are to be found legitimately developed.

Tobacco is a culture productive of infinite wretchedness.

My God! How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy!

A pirate spreading misery and ruin over the face of the ocean

Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of a Censor - over each other.

We do, then, most solemnly before God and the world declare that regardless of every consequence, at the risk of every distress, the arms we have been compelled to assume we will use with perseverance, exerting to their utmost energies all those powers which our Creator hath given us to preserve that liberty which he committed to us in sacred deposit and to protect from every hostile hand our lives and our properties.

Never suppose that in any possible situation or under any circumstances that it is best for you to do a dishonorable thing however slightly so it may appear to you... Encourage all your virtuous dispositions, and exercise them whenever an opportunity arises, being assured that they will gain strength by exercise ... and that exercise will make them habitual.

Never buy what you do not want, because it is cheap; it will be dear to you.

The power of making war often prevents it.

By... [selecting] the youths of genius from among the classes of the poor, we hope to avail the State of those talents which nature has sown as liberally among the poor as the rich, but which perish without use if not sought for and cultivated.

The federal government is our servant, not our master.

When we come to the moral principles on which the government is to be administered, we come to what is proper for all conditions of society. Liberty, truth, probity, honor, are declared to be the four cardinal principles of society. I believe that morality, compassion, generosity, are innate elements of the human constitution; that there exists a right independent of force.

It is not only vain, but wicked, in a legislator to frame laws in opposition to the laws of nature, and to arm them with the terrors of death. This is truly creating crimes in order to punish them.

To constrain the brute force of the people, the European governments deem it necessary to keep them down by hard labor, poverty and ignorance, and to take from them, as from bees, so much of their earnings, as that unremitting labor shall be necessary to obtain a sufficient surplus to sustain a scanty and miserable life.

The greatest calamity which could befall us would be submission to a government of unlimited powers.

What is it men cannot be made to believe!

The moral sense is as much a part of our constitution as that of feeling, seeing, or hearing.

I have overlived the generation with which mutual labors & perils begat mutual confidence and influence.

The people of every country are the only safe guardians of their own rights, and are the only instruments which can be used for their destruction. And certainly they would never consent to be so used were they not deceived. To avoid this they should be instructed to a certain degree.

Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed us, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits.

Every State has a natural right in cases not within the compact (casus non faederis) to nullify of their own authority all assumptions of power by others within their limits. Without this right, they would be under the dominion, absolute and unlimited, of whosoever might exercise this right of judgment for them.

It is comfortable to see the standard of reason at length erected, after so many ages, during which the human mind has been held in vassalage by kings, priests, and nobles; and it is honorable for us to have produced the first legislature who had the courage to declare that the reason of man may be trusted with the formation of his own opinions.