Thomas Jefferson Quotes

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

Educate and inform the whole mass of the people.

May it be to the world... to assume the blessings and security of self-government.

Dependence begets subservience and paves the way for tyranny.

no one more sincerely wishes the spread of information among mankind than I do, and none has greater confidence in it's effect towards supporting free & good government.

Victory and defeat are each of the same price.

I wish to see this beverage become common instead of the whiskey which kills sone-third of our citizens and ruins their families.

The Christian religion is the best religion that has ever been given to man

What justice would there be to take this life? Justice, gentlemen? Why, I would just as soon put a hog in the electric chair as this.

The provisions we have made [for our government] are such as please ourselves; they answer the substantial purposes of government and of justice, and other purposes than these should not be answered.

Natural rights [are] the objects for the protection of which society is formed and municipal laws established.

The power of making war often prevents it, and in our case would give efficacy to our desire of peace.

Public employment contributes neither to advantage nor happiness. It is but honorable exile from one's family and affairs.

The art of life is the art of avoiding pain; and he is the best pilot, who steers clearest of the rocks and shoals with which it is beset.

Some other natural rights... [have] not yet entered into any declaration of rights.

I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.

The idea is quite unfounded that on entering into society we give up any natural rights.

Let us in education dream of an aristocracy of achievement arising out of a democracy of opportunity

Knowledge is power...knowled ge is safety...knowle dge is happiness.

I can never fear that things will go far wrong where common sense has fair play.

Let those flatter who fear; it is not an American art .

If a due participation of office is a matter of right, how are vacancies to be obtained? Those by death are few; by resignation, none.

I deem no government safe which is under the vassalage of any self-constituted authorities, or any other authority than that of the nation, or its regular functionaries.

Take painsto write a neat round, plain hand, and you will find it a great convenience through life to write a small and compact hand as well as a fair and legible one.

It is a misnomer to call a government republican in which a branch of the supreme power is independent of the nation.

The religion-builders have so distorted and deformed the doctrines of Jesus, so muffled them in mysticism, fancies, and falsehoods.

The earth belongs to the living, not to the dead.

The second office in the government is honorable and easy; the first is but a splendid misery.

I... [am] convinced [man] has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.

The juries are our judges of all fact, and of law when they choose it.

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

The issue for patents for new discovers has given a spring to invention beyond my conception.

The office of reformer of the superstitions of a nation is ever dangerous.

I like the power given the Legislature to levy taxes, and for that reason solely approve of the greater house being chosen by the people directly.

It is better to have no ideas than false ones.

I have seen enough of one war never to wish to see another.

The dominion which the banking institutions have obtained over the minds of our citizens...must be broken, or it will break us.

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

I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others.

Rogueries, absurdities and untruths were perpetrated upon the teachings of Jesus by a large band of dupes and importers led by Paul, the first great corrupter of the teaching of Jesus.

A Nation's best defense is an educated citizenry

Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the statute of Virginia for religious freedom, and father of the University of Virginia.

Nothing is troublesome that we do willingly.

The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them, in-as-much as he who knows nothing is nearer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehood and errors.

My passion strengthens daily to quit political turmoil, and retire into the bosom of my family, the only scene of sincere and purehappiness.

An occasional insurrection will not weigh against the inconveniences of a government of force, such as are monarchies and aristocracies.

I hope that we have not labored in vain, and that our experiment will still prove that men can be governed by reason.

[O]ur rules can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God.

Debt and revolution are inseparable as cause and effect.

The time to guard against corruption and tyranny is before they shall have gotten hold of us.