Thomas Jefferson Quotes

Nothing can be believed but what one sees, or has from an eye witness.

A little rebellion now and then is a good thing. Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God. In order to flourish, the tree of Liberty needs the blood of patriots and tyrants.

A man's moral sense must be unusually strong if slavery does not make him a thief.

Freedom [is] the first-born daughter of science

One precedent in favor of power is stronger than a hundred against it.

The merchant has no country .

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.

From candlelight to early bedtime, I read.

Choice by the people themselves is not generally distinguished for its wisdom.

The declaration that religious faith shall be unpunished does not give immunity to criminal acts dictated by religious error.

[We should be] determined... to sever ourselves from the union we so much value rather than give up the rights of self-government... in which alone we see liberty, safety and happiness.

I have ever deemed it fundamental for the United States never to take active part in the quarrels of Europe.... They are nations of eternal war.

Responsibility is a tremendous engine in a free government.

The law of self-preservation is higher than written law.

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

I do verily believe that a single, consolidated government would become the most corrupt government on the earth.

Ambition is a tricky little animal to tame. It is very skillful at concealing itself from its master.

So inscrutable is the arrangement of causes and consequences in this world, that a two-penny duty on tea, unjustly imposed in a sequestered part of it, changes the condition of all its inhabitants.

Nothing was or is farther from my intentions, than to enlist myself as the champion of a fixed opinion, where I have only expressed doubt.

Whatever enables us to go to war, secures our peace

A Man's management of his own purse speaks volumes about character

no people can be both ignorant and free.

No government can be maintained without the principle of fear as well as duty.

Jefferson was the rare leader who stood out from the crowd without intimidating it.

The hole and the patch should be commensurate.

The man who fears no truths has nothing to fear from lies.

If I had to choose between government and a free press, I would choose a free press.

No society can make a perpetual constitution... The earth belongs always to the living generation.

Wine from long habit has become an indispensable for my health

The only way to win money out of a casino is to own one.

As for what is not true, you will always find abundance in the newspapers.

Material abundance without character is the surest way to destruction.

The past stays put, I just keep moving farther away from it.

Slavery is an abomination and must be loudly proclaimed as such, but I own that I nor any other man has any immediate solution to the problem.

I am not afraid of the priests. They have tried upon me all their various batteries, of pious whining, hypocritical canting, lying and slandering, without being able to give me one moment of pain.

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.

The failure of one thing is repaired by the success of another.

Merchants have no country.

Difficulties indeed sometimes arise; but common sense and honest intentions will generally steer through them.

How did Jefferson feel about the people of his day who were the equivalent of our modern day penecostals? You know, those revelation reveling tongue speaking idiots.

All the States but our own are sensible that knowlege is power.

The objects of this primary education . . . would be . . . to form the statesmen, legislators and judges, on whom public prosperity and individual happiness are so much to depend.

Anarchy [is] necessarily consequent to inefficiency.

Light and liberty go together.

With those who wish to think amiss of me, I have learnt to be perfectly indifferent: but where I know a mind to be ingenuous, andto need only truth to set it to rights, I cannot be as passive.

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

Nothing betrays imbecility so much as the being insensible of it.

My principle is to do whatever is right, and leave consequences to him who has the disposal of them.

If we are made in some degree for others, yet in a greater are we made for ourselves.

No race of kings has ever presented above one man of common sense in twenty generations.