Thomas Jefferson Quotes

[States and the Federal government are] coordinate departments of one simple and integral whole... The one is the domestic, the other the foreign branch of the same government.

No knowledge can be more satisfactory to a man than that of his own frame, its parts, their functions and actions.

Force cannot give right.

I do not agree that an age of pleasure is no compensation for a moment of pain.

Peace is our passion.

Sensibility of mind is indeed the parent of every virtue, but it is the parent of much misery, too.

Agreeable society is the first essential in constituting the happiness and of course the value of our existence.

Without society, and a society to our taste, men are never contented.

Everything is useful which contributes to fix the principles and practices of virtue.

The best commentary on the principles of government which has ever been written.

Blest is that nation whose silent course of happiness furnishes nothing for history to say.

Big banks are more dangerous than standing armies, and the practice of borrowing and spending money to be paid back by the next generation is stealing from their future.

No country and no people can be free and ignorant at the same time.

Never use one word when two will do.

There is no King, who, with sufficient force, is not always ready to make himself absolute.

An hereditary aristocracy... will change the form of our governments from the best to the worst in the world.

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.

The same facts impress us differently.

No man will ever carry out of the Presidency the reputation which carried him into it.

Our wish is that...[there be] maintained that state of property, equal or unequal, which results to every man from his own industry or that of his fathers.

Private enterprise manages so much better all the concerns to which it is equal.

The merchants will manage [commerce] the better, the more they are left free to manage for themselves.

The art of printing secures us against the retrogradation of reason and information.

To be really useful, we must keep pace with the state of society, and not dishearten it by attempts at what its population, means, or occupations will fail in attempting.

No one, I hope, can doubt my wish to see... all mankind exercising self-government, and capable of exercising it. But the question is not what we wish, but what is practicable.

Doubts and jealousies often beget the facts they fear.

For themselves they fought, for themselves they conquered, and for themselves alone they have they have right to hold.

He [Weishaupt] says, no one ever laid a surer foundation for liberty than our grand master, Jesus of Nazareth.

If you serve humanity, you serve humanity's God.

Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time, who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done, if we are always doing.

While the art of printing is left to us science can never be retrograde what is once acquired of real knowledge can never be lost.

History, in general, only informs us what bad government is.

All that is necessary for a student is access to a library.

I think one travels more usefully when they travel alone, because they reflect

The equal rights of man, and the happiness of every individual, are now acknowledged to be the only legitimate objects of government.

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground.

I hope that we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty, than those attending too small a degree of it.

The greatest service which can be rendered any country is to add a useful plant to its culture.--The Fruit Hunters

Plato offers the amazing idea that contemplation of the way things really are is, in itself, a purifying process that can bring human beings into the only divinity there is.

All should be laid open to you without reserve, for there is not a truth existing which I fear, or would wish unknown to the whole world.

I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led.

Honesty is the first chapter of the book wisdom.

I may grow rich by an art I am compelled to follow I may recover health by medicines I am compelled to take against my own judgment but I cannot be saved by a worship I disbelieve and abhor.

They (religions) dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subversions of the duperies on which they live.

A nation which expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, expects that which never was and never will be.

Determine never to be idle. It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing.

Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions any more than our opinions in physics or geometry...

The more ignorant we become the less value we set on science, and the less inclination we shall have to seek it.

Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations...entangling alliances with none