Thomas Jefferson Quotes

“I hope that we have not labored in vain, and that our experiment will still prove that men can be governed by reason.”

“Man was destined for society. His morality therefore was to be formed to this object. He was endowed with a sense of right and wrong merely relative to this. This sense is as much a part of his nature as the sense of hearing, seeing, feeling; it is the true foundation of morality... The moral sense, or conscience, is as much a part of man as his leg or arm. It is given to all human beings in a stronger or weaker degree, as force of members is given them in a greater or less degree. It may be strengthened by exercise, as may any particular limb of the body.”

“When a man assumes a public trust he should consider himself a public property.”

“We see the wisdom of Solon's remark, that no more good must be attempted than the nation can bear.”

“So much of the presidency is a matter of standing in the path of a Newsham Engine for Quenching Fires, opening one's mouth, and attempting to get a drink.”

“It is more honorable to repair a wrong than to persist in it.”

“People generally have more feeling for canals and roads than education. However, I hope we can advance them with equal pace.”

“The chief purpose of government is to protect life. Abandon that and you have abandoned all.”

“To your request of my opinion of the manner in which a newspaper should be conducted, so as to be most useful, I should answer, "by restraining it to true facts & sound principles only." Yet I fear such a paper would find few subscribers. It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more completely deprive the nation of it's benefits, than is done by it's abandoned prostitution to falsehood.”

“When we consider how much climate contributes to the happiness of our condition, by the fine sensation it excites, and the productions it is the parent of, we have reason to value highly the accident of birth in such a one as that of Virginia.”

“The smell rewards the care.”

“I cannot live without books: but fewer will suffice where amusement, and not use, is the only future object.”

“If we move in mass, be it ever so circuitously, we shall attain our object; but if we break into squads, everyone pursuing the path he thinks most direct, we become an easy conquest to those who can now barely hold us in check.”

“No man will ever bring out of that office the reputation which carries him into it. The honeymoon would be as short in that case as in any other, and its moments of ecstasy would be ransomed by years of torment and hatred.”

“Power is not alluring to pure minds.”

“Some men look at Constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them, like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment. I knew that age well; I belonged to and labored with it. It deserved well of its country. It was very like the present, but without the experience of the present; and forty years of experience in Government is worth a century of book-reading; and this they would say themselves, were they to rise from the dead.”

“We lay it down as a fundamental, that laws, to be just, must give a reciprocation of right; that, without this, they are mere arbitrary rules of conduct, founded in force, and not in conscience.”

“I know of no safe depository of the ultimate power of the society but the people themselves.”

“The ocean ... like the air, is the common birth-right of mankind.”

“The small landholders are the most precious part of a state.”

“I am already sensible of decay in the power of walking, and find my memory not so faithful as it used to be. This may be partly owing to the incessant current of new matter flowing constantly through it; but I ascribe to years their share in it also.”

“It is wonderful to me that old men should not be sensible that their minds keep pace with their bodies in the progress of decay.”

“With nations as with individuals our interests soundly calculated will ever be found inseparable from our moral duties.”

“If ever there was a holy war, it was that which saved our liberties and gave us independence.”

“As you are entered with the class of Nat. philosophy, give to it the hours of lecture, but devote all your other time to Mathematics, avoiding company as the bane of all progress.”