Top 1819 Quotes & Sayings by Thomas Jefferson - Page 2
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American president Thomas Jefferson.
Last updated on September 17, 2024.
War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses.
Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state.
Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.
When a man assumes a public trust he should consider himself a public property.
Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong.
The glow of one warm thought is to me worth more than money.
It is our duty still to endeavor to avoid war; but if it shall actually take place, no matter by whom brought on, we must defend ourselves. If our house be on fire, without inquiring whether it was fired from within or without, we must try to extinguish it.
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?
I have no ambition to govern men; it is a painful and thankless office.
The Creator has not thought proper to mark those in the forehead who are of stuff to make good generals. We are first, therefore, to seek them blindfold, and then let them learn the trade at the expense of great losses.
I own that I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.
Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.
Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.
A coward is much more exposed to quarrels than a man of spirit.
If God is just, I tremble for my country.
Power is not alluring to pure minds.
Leave no authority existing not responsible to the people.
It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.
It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God.
There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me.
Be polite to all, but intimate with few.
Resort is had to ridicule only when reason is against us.
I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it.
One travels more usefully when alone, because he reflects more.
Money, not morality, is the principle commerce of civilized nations.
I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be.
Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence.
I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led, and bearding every authority which stood in their way.
Errors of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.
It is in our lives and not our words that our religion must be read.
To penetrate and dissipate these clouds of darkness, the general mind must be strengthened by education.
Nothing is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man.
Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.
Taste cannot be controlled by law.
Do not bite at the bait of pleasure, till you know there is no hook beneath it.
Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government.
I abhor war and view it as the greatest scourge of mankind.
Only aim to do your duty, and mankind will give you credit where you fail.
I cannot live without books.
Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct.
In every country and every age, the priest had been hostile to Liberty.
That government is the strongest of which every man feels himself a part.
I find that he is happiest of whom the world says least, good or bad.
The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind.
The earth belongs to the living, not to the dead.
To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.
I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master.
History, in general, only informs us of what bad government is.
It is always better to have no ideas than false ones; to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong.
There is not a truth existing which I fear... or would wish unknown to the whole world.
Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.
No freeman shall be debarred the use of arms.
Delay is preferable to error.
I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion.
For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their best security.
My theory has always been, that if we are to dream, the flatteries of hope are as cheap, and pleasanter, than the gloom of despair.
I sincerely believe... that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies.
None but an armed nation can dispense with a standing army. To keep ours armed and disciplined is therefore at all times important.
We may consider each generation as a distinct nation, with a right, by the will of its majority, to bind themselves, but none to bind the succeeding generation, more than the inhabitants of another country.
Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor.
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