Famous Quotes

Quotes by Thomas Jefferson

• A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.
• A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be your constant companion of your walks.
• A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circlue of our felicities.
• An association of men who will not quarrel with one another is a thing which has never yet existed, from the greatest confederacy of nations down to a town meeting or a vestry.
• As our enemies have found we can reason like men, so now let us show them we can fight like men also.
• Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.
• But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life, and thanks to a benevolent arrangement the greater part of life is sunshine.
• Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government.
• 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.
• Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of a Censor - over each other.
• Do you want to know who you are? Don't ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.
• Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.
• 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.
• Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.
• Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.
• For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their best security.
• Friendship is but another name for an alliance with the follies and the misfortunes of others. Our own share of miseries is sufficient: why enter then as volunteers into those of another?
• Happiness is not being pained in body or troubled in mind.
• He who knows best knows how little he knows.
• He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.
• History, in general, only informs us of what bad government is.
• Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.
• I abhor war and view it as the greatest scourge of mankind.
• I believe that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another.
• I find that he is happiest of whom the world says least, good or bad.
• I have no ambition to govern men it is a painful and thankless office.
• I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master.
• I have seen enough of one war never to wish to see another.
• I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.
• I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be.
• I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.