Thomas Jefferson Quotes

“No experiment can be more interesting than that we are now trying, and which we trust will end in establishing the fact, that man may be governed by reason and truth. Our first object should therefore be, to leave open to him all the avenues to truth. The most effectual hitherto found, is the freedom of the press. It is, therefore, the first shut up by those who fear the investigation of their actions.”

“A private central bank issuing the public currency is a greater menace to the liberties of the people than a standing army. We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.”

“Laws provide against injury from others; but not from ourselves.”

“It takes time to persuade men to do even what is for their own good.”

“We will be soldiers, so our sons may be farmers, so their sons may be artists”

“Our people shall be free”

“Knowledge is power...knowled ge is safety...knowle dge is happiness.”

“The foundation on which (our government is) built is the natural equality of man, the denial of every pre-eminence but that annexed to legal office, and particularly the denial of a pre-eminence by birth.”

“Who will govern the governors? There is only one force in the nation that can be depended upon to keep the government pure and the governors honest, and that is the people themselves. They alone, if well informed, are capable of preventing the corruption of power, and of restoring the nation to its rightful course if it should go astray. They alone are the safest depository of the ultimate powers of government.”

“The great cause which divides our countries is not to be decided by individual animosities. The harmony of private societies cannot weaken national efforts.”

“Most codes extend their definitions of treason to acts not really against one's country. They do not distinguish between acts against the government, and acts against the oppressions of the government. The latter are virtues, yet have furnished more victims to the executioner than the former. Real treasons are rare; oppressions frequent. The unsuccessful strugglers against tyranny have been the chief martyrs of treason laws in all countries.”

“[My] pillar of support through life.... I can say conscientiously that I do not know in the world a man of purer integrity, more dispassionate, disinterested, and devoted to genuine Republicanism; nor could I in the whole scope of America and Europe point out an abler head.”

“Agriculture is our wisest pursuit, because it will in the end contribute most to real wealth, good morals, and happiness.”

“We confide in our strength, without boasting of it, we respect that of others, without fearing it.”

“Let common sense and common honesty have fair play, and they will soon set things to rights.”

“Laws ... proportionate and mild should never be dispensed with. Let mercy be the character of the law-giver, but let the judge be a mere machine.”

“A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for a second; that second for a third; and so on, till the bulk of the society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery, to have no sensibilities left but for sin and suffering.”

“I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master.”

“The liberty of the whole earth was depending on the issue of the contest, and was ever such a prize won with so little innocent blood?”

“Man ... feels that he is a participator in the government of affairs not merely at an election, one day in the year, but every day.”

“The good opinion of mankind, like the lever of Archimedes, with the given fulcrum, moves the world.”

“I set out on this ground, which I suppose to be self evident, "that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living": that the dead have neither powers nor rights over it.”

“I am ever unwilling that [peace] should be disturbed as long asthe rights and interests of the nations can be preserved. But whensoever hostile aggressions on theserequire a resort to war, we must meet our duty and convince the world that we arejust friends and brave enemies.”

“No man has greater confidence than I have in the spirit of the people, to a rational extent. Whatever they can, they will.”

“Never yet could I find that a black had uttered a thought above the level of plain narration; never saw even an elemental trait of painting or sculpture.”

“Private fortunes, in the present state of our circulation, are at the mercy of those self-created money lenders, and are prostrated by the floods of nominal money with which their avarice deluges us.”

“Only aim to do your duty, and mankind will give you credit where you fail.”

“The evils which of necessity encompass the life of man are sufficiently numerous. Why should we add to them by voluntarily distressing and destroying one another? Peace, brothers, is better than war. In a long and bloody war, we lose many friends, and gain nothing. Let us then live in peace and friendship together, doing to each other all the good we can.”

“I think our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries as long as they are chiefly agricultural; and this will be as long as there shall be vacant lands in any part of America. When they get piled upon one another in large cities as in Europe, they will become corrupt as in Europe.”

“One had rather have no opinion than a false one.”

“Eternal Vigilance is the price of democracy.”

“If, in my retirement to the humble station of a private citizen, I am accompanied with the esteem and approbation of my fellow citizens, trophies obtained by the bloodstained steel, or the tattered flags of the tented field, will never be envied. The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government.”

“The value of science to a republican people, the security it gives to liberty by enlightening the minds of its citizens, the protection it affords against foreign power, the virtue it inculcates, the just emulation of the distinction it confers on nations foremost in it; in short, its identification with power, morals, order and happiness (which merits to it premiums of encouragement rather than repressive taxes), are considerations [that should] always [be] present and [bear] with their just weight.”

“This I hope will be the age of experiments in government, and that their basis will be founded in principles of honesty, not of mere force.”

“No generation has a right to contract debts greater than can be paid off during the course of its own existence.”

“Let the farmer forevermore be honored in his calling; for they who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God.”

“One loves to possess arms, though they hope never to have occasion for them.”

“I am opposed to any form of tyranny over the mind of man.”

“Should [reformers] attempt more than the established habits of the people are ripe for, they may lose all and retard indefinitely the ultimate object of their aim.”

“[T]he true key for the construction of everything doubtful in a law is the intention of the law-makers. This is most safely gathered from the words, but may be sought also in extraneous circumstances provided they do not contradict the express words of the law.”

“Agriculture, manufactures, commerce, and navigation, the four pillars of our prosperity, are the most thriving when left most free to individual enterprise.”

“The day is not distant when we must bear and adopt [the abolition of slavery], or worse will follow.”

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

“One travels more usefully when alone, because he reflects more.”

“I see the necessity of sacrificing our opinions sometimes to the opinions of others for the sake of harmony.”

“To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude.”

“Take painsto write a neat round, plain hand, and you will find it a great convenience through life to write a small and compact hand as well as a fair and legible one.”

“No provision in our Constitution ought to be dearer to man than that which protects the rights of conscience against the enterprises of the civil authority.”

“I pledge undying hostility to any government restrictions on the free minds of the people.”

“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.”