Thomas Jefferson Quotes

“Yet by such worthless beings is a great nation to be governed and even made to deify their old king because he is only a fool and a maniac, and to forgive and forget his having lost to them a great and flourishing empire.”

“Paper is poverty, it is only the ghost of money, and not money itself.”

“Love your neighbor as yourself and your country more than yourself.”

“Societies exist under three forms sufficiently distinguishable. 1. Without government, as among our Indians. 2. Under governments wherein the will of every one has a just influence, as is the case in England in a slight degree, and in our states, in a great one. 3. Under governments of force: as is the case in all other monarchies and in most of the other republics. To have an idea of the curse of existence under these last, they must be seen. It is a government of wolves over sheep.”

“The Declaration of Independence . . . [is the] declaratory charter of our rights, and the rights of man.”

“How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened.”

“We never repent of having eaten too little.”

“I feel a much greater interest in knowing what has passed two or three thousand years ago, than in what is now passing. I read nothing, therefore, but of the heroes of Troy, ... of Pompey and Caesar, and of Augustus too.”

“If NATURE has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea... No one possesses the less, because every other possess the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.”

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

“That one hundred and fifty lawyers should do business together ought not to be expected.”

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

“Instead of that liberty which takes root and growth in the progress of reason, if recovered by mere force or accident, it becomes with an unprepared people a tyranny still of the many, the few, or the one.”

“If virtuous, the government need not fear the fair operation of attack and defense. Nature has given to man no other means of sifting the truth, either in religion, law, or politics.”

“There is preparing, I hope, under the auspices of heaven, a way for a total emancipation.”

“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.”

“The art of governing consists simply of being honest, exercising common sense, following principle, and doing what is right and just.”

“Industry, commerce and security are the surest roads to the happiness and prosperity of people.”

“Give up money, give up fame, give up science, give the earth itself and all it contains, rather than do an immoral act.”

“Men of high learning and abilities are few in every country; and by taking in those who are not so, the able part of the body have their hands tied by the unable.”

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

“The most effective way to find ourselves enslaved will not be done openly. If weakened we will sink gradually. I ask, who are the militia? They consist of the whole people, .... except a few public officers.”

“The system of banking have[for]ever reprobated. I contemplate it as a blot left in all our Constitutions, which, if not covered, will end in their destruction, which is already hit by the gamblers in corruption, and is sweeping away in its progress the fortunes and morals of our citizens.”

“But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

“There are other places at which ... the laws have said there shall be towns; but Nature has said there shall not, and they remain unworthy of enumeration.”