| A bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular; and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| A coward is much more exposed to quarrels than a man of spirit. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.
— Rights of British America, 1774 | — Thomas Jefferson |
| A judiciary independent of a king or executive alone, is a good thing; but independence of the will of the nation is a solecism, at least in a republican government.
— Letter to Thomas Ritchie, December 25, 1820 | — Thomas Jefferson |
| A little rebellion now and then is a good thing.... | — Thomas Jefferson |
| A militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves. They include all men capable of bearing arms. To preserve liberty is essential that the whole body of people always possess arms and be taught alike how to use them. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| A morsel of genuine history is a thing so rare as to be always valuable. — September 8, 1817 | — Thomas Jefferson |
| 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. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| A rigid economy of the public contributions and absolute interdiction of all useless expenses will go far towards keeping the government honest and unoppressive.
— Letter to Lafayette, 1823 | — Thomas Jefferson |
| 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.
— Letter to Peter Carr, August 19, 1785 | — Thomas Jefferson |
| A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men 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. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride legitimately, by the grace of God.
— Letter to Roger C. Weightman, June 24, 1826 | — Thomas Jefferson |
| All the States but our own are sensible that knowledge is power.
— Letter to Joseph C. Cabell, January 22, 1820 | — Thomas Jefferson |
| All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.
— First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801 | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Although in the circle of his friends, where he might be unreserved with safety, he took a free share in conversation his colloquial talents were not above mediocrity, possessing neither copiousness of ideas, nor fluency of words. In public, when called on for a sudden opinion, he was unready, short and embarrassed.
— Letter to Dr. Walter Jones, January 2, 1814 | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Always take hold of things by the smooth handle. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| 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. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| An enemy generally says and believes what he wishes. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens....There has never been a moment of my life in which I should have relinquished for it the enjoyments of my family, my farm, my friends & books.
— Letter to John Melish, January 13, 1813 | — Thomas Jefferson |
| An injured friend is the bitterest of foes. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever.
— Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 18, 1781 | — Thomas Jefferson |
| And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the priciple of spending money to be paid by posterity, uner the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.
— Letter to John Taylor 28 May 1816 | — Thomas Jefferson |
| As our enemies have found we can reason like men, so now let us show them we can fight like men also. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| At the establishment of our constitutions, the judiciary bodies were supposed to be the most helpless and harmless members of the government. Experience, however, soon showed in what way they were to become the most dangerous; that the insufficiency of the means provided for their removal gave them a freehold and irresponsibility in office; that their decisions, seeming to concern individual suitors only, pass silent and unheeded by the public at large; that these decisions, nevertheless, become law by precedent, sapping, by little and little, the foundations of the constitution, and working its change by construction, before any one has perceived that that invisible and helpless worm has been busily employed in consuming its substance. In truth, man is not made to be trusted for life, if secured against all liability to account.
— Letter to Monsieur A. Coray, Oct 31, 1823 | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Be polite to all, but intimate with few. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and State.
— Letter to a Committee of the Danbury Baptist Association, Connecticut, January 1, 1802 | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Bodily decay is gloomy in prospect, but of all human contemplations the most abhorrent is body without mind. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| 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. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Born in other countries, yet believing you could be happy in this, our laws acknowledge, as they should do, your right to join us in society, conforming, as I doubt not you will do, to our established rules. That these rules shall be as equal as prudential considerations will admit, will certainly be the aim of our legislatures, general and particular.
— Letter to Hugh White, May 2, 1801 | — Thomas Jefferson |
| But every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have been called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists | — Thomas Jefferson |
| 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. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| But of all the views of this law none is more important, none more legitimate, than that of rendering the people the safe, as they are the ultimate, guardians of their own liberty. For this purpose the reading in the first stage, where they will receive their whole education, is proposed, as has been said, to be chiefly historical. History by apprising them of the past will enable them to judge of the future; it will avail them of the experience of other times and other nations; it will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men; it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume; and knowing it, to defeat its views.
— Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 14, 1781 | — Thomas Jefferson |
| But with respect to future debt; would it not be wise and just for that nation to declare in the constitution they are forming that neither the legislature, nor the nation itself can validly contract more debt, than they may pay within their own age, or within the term of 19 years.
— September 6, 1789 | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Cherish, therefore, the spirit of our people, and keep alive their attention. Do not be too severe upon their errors, but reclaim them by enlightening them. If once they become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress, and Assemblies, Judges, and Governors, shall all become wolves.
— Letter to Edward Carrington, January 16, 1787 | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Christianity neither is, nor ever was, a part of the common law. — Letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814 | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare but only those specifically enumerated. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Delay is preferable to error. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.
— Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 19, 1787 | — Thomas Jefferson |
| 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. And that you may be always doing good, my dear, is the ardent prayer of yours affectionately. — Letter to Martha Jefferson, May 5, 1787 | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of a Censor - over each other. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Do not bite at the bait of pleasure, till you know there is no hook beneath it. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Do you want to know who you are? Don't ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Don't talk about what you have done or what you are going to do. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| During the course of administration, and in order to disturb it, the artillery of the press has been leveled against us, charged with whatsoever its licentiousness could devise or dare. These abuses of an institution so important to freedom and science are deeply to be regretted, inasmuch as they tend to lessen its usefulness and to sap its safety.
— Second Inaugural Address, December 9, 1805 | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Educate and inform the whole mass of the people. Enable them to see that it is their interest to preserve peace and order, and they will preserve them. They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day. — Letter to Dupont de Nemours, April 24, 1816 | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever persuasion, religious or political.
— First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801 | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Errors of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle
— First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801 | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Every generation needs a new revolution. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories. — Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 14, 1781 | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Every one must act according to the dictates of his own reason, and mine tells me that civil powers alone have been given to the President of the United States, and no authority to direct the religious exercises of his constituents. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Every State has a natural right in cases not within the compact (casus non faederis) to nullify of their own authority all assumptions of power by others within their limits. Without this right, they would be under the dominion, absolute and unlimited, of whosoever might exercise this right of judgment for them.
— Draft Kentucky Resolutions, 1798 | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Everyone has a natural right to choose that vocation in life which he thinks most likely to give him comfortable subsistence | — Thomas Jefferson |
| 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. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| 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. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Experience having long taught me the reasonableness of mutual sacrifices of opinion among those who are to act together for any common object, and the expediency of doing what good we can; when we cannot do all we would wish.
— Letter to John Randolph, December 1, 1803 | — Thomas Jefferson |
| 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. — Letter to Peter Carr (1787) | — Thomas Jefferson |
| For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their best security. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| For example. If the system be established on basis of Income, and his just proportion on that scale has been already drawn from every one, to step into the field of Consumption, and tax special articles in that, as broadcloth or homespun, wine or whiskey, a coach or a wagon, is doubly taxing the same article. For that portion of Income with which these articles are purchased, having already paid its tax as Income, to pay another tax on the thing it purchased, is paying twice for the same thing; it is an aggrievance on the citizens who use these articles in exoneration of those who do not, contrary to the most sacred of the duties of a government, to do equal and impartial justice to all its citizens.
— Letter to Joseph Milligan, April 6, 1816 | — Thomas Jefferson |
| For I agree with you that there is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents.
— October 28, 1813 | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Force is the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Freedom of discussion, unaided by power, is… sufficient for the propagation and protection of truth
— Second Inaugural Address, 1805 | — Thomas Jefferson |
| 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? | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Give up money, give up fame, give up science, give the earth itself and all it contains rather than do an immoral act. And never suppose that in any possible situation, or under any circumstances, it is best for you to do a dishonorable thing, however slightly so it may appear to you... From the practice of the purest virtue, you may be assured you will derive the most sublime comforts in every moment of life, and in the moment of death.
— Letter to Peter Carr, August 19, 1785 | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Happiness is not being pained in body or troubled in mind. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Harmony in the married state is the very first object to be aimed at
— Letter to Mary Jefferson Eppes, January 7, 1798 | — Thomas Jefferson |
| He who is permitted by law to have no property of his own, can with difficulty conceive that property is founded in anything but force.
— January 26, 1788 | — Thomas Jefferson |
| He who knows best knows how little he knows. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| He [King George] has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred right of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither.
— Deleted portion of a draft of the Declaration of Independence, June, 1776 | — Thomas Jefferson |
| His temper was excellent, and he generally observed decorum in debate. On one or two occasions I have seen him angry, and his anger was terrible; those who witnessed it, were not disposed to rouse it again.
— on Patrick Henry, December, 1824 | — Thomas Jefferson |
| History, in general, only informs us of what bad government is. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Honour, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us. We cannot endure the infamy and guilt of resigning succeeding generations to that wretchedness which inevitably awaits them, if we ba...sely entail hereditary bondage upon them. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| I abhor war and view it as the greatest scourge of mankind. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| I am a Christian, that is to say a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus. I have little doubt that our whole country will soon be rallied to the unity of our Creator and, I hope, to the pure doctrine of Jesus also. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| I am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greek and Roman leave to us. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| I am mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, the sale of a book can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.
— Letter to the Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin (1802) | — Thomas Jefferson |
| I believe that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| I cannot live without books. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| I consider the people who constitute a society or a nation as the source of all authority in that nation | — Thomas Jefferson |
| I deem one of the essential principles of our government: equal and exact justice to all men of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political | — Thomas Jefferson |
| I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| I find that he is happiest of whom the world says least, good or bad. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| I have no ambition to govern men; it is a painful and thankless office. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition (Christianity) one redeeming feature. They are all alike founded on fables and mythology. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| I have seen enough of one war never to wish to see another. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. — To Dr. Benjamin Rush (23 Sept. 1800) | — Thomas Jefferson |
| I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| 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. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| I know but one code of morality for men, whether acting singly or collectively. He who says I will be a rouge when I act in company with a hundred others, but an honest man when I act alone, will be believed in former assertion, but not in the latter… if the morality of one man produces a just line of conduct in him, acting individually, why should not the morality of one hundred men produce a just line of conduct in them, acting together?
— 1789 | — Thomas Jefferson |
| I know 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 by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of Constitutional power. — To William C. Jarvis, 1820 | — Thomas Jefferson |
| I know that the acquisition of Louisiana has been disapproved by some ... that the enlargement of our territory would endanger its union.... The larger our association the less will it be shaken by local passions; and in any view is it not better that the opposite bank of the Mississippi should be settled by our own brethren and children than by strangers of another family? | — Thomas Jefferson |
| I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| I own that I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| I think with the Romans, that the general of today should be a soldier tomorrow if necessary. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| I view great cities as pestilential to the morals, the health, and the liberties of man. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| 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. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| I'm a great believer in luck and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| If God is just, I tremble for my country. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| 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? | — Thomas Jefferson |
| If there is one principle more deeply rooted in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them, they must become happy. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| In every country and every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own. It is easier to acquire wealth and power by this combination than by deserving them, and to effect this, they have perverted the purest religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind, and therefore the safer for their purposes.
— In a letter to Horatio Spofford, 1814 | — Thomas Jefferson |
| In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| In questions of power then let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.
— Kentucky Resolutions - 1798 | — Thomas Jefferson |
| In truth, politeness is artificial good humor, it covers the natural want of it, and ends by rendering habitual a substitute nearly equivalent to the real virtue. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Information is the currency of democracy. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| It is always better to have no ideas than false ones; to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| It is in our lives and not our words that our religion must be read. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| It is in the love of one's family only that heartfelt happiness is known. By a law of our nature, we cannot be happy without the endearing connections of a family | — Thomas Jefferson |
| It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world. It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| It is neither wealth nor splendor; but tranquility and occupation which give you happiness. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| It is of great importance to set a resolution, not to be shaken, never to tell an untruth. There is no vice so mean, so pitiful, so contemptible; and he who permits himself to tell a lie once finds it much easier to do it a second, and third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world’s believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions.
— To Peter Carr, 1785 | — Thomas Jefferson |
| 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. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| It takes time to persuade men to do even what is for their own good. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Its soul, its climate, its equality, liberty, laws, people, and manners. My god! how little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy! | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Leave all the afternoon for exercise and recreation, which are as necessary as reading. I will rather say more necessary because health is worth more than learning. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Leave no authority existing not responsible to the people. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Liberty is to the collective body, what health is to every individual body. Without health no pleasure can be tasted by man; without liberty, no happiness can be enjoyed by society. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Money, not morality, is the principle commerce of civilized nations. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| My only fear is that I may live too long. This would be a subject of dread to me. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| 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. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Nature intended me for the tranquil pursuits of science, by rendering them my supreme delight. But the enormities of the times in which I have lived have forced me to take a part in resisting them, and to commit myself on the boisterous ocean of political passions. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Never spend your money before you have earned it. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| No duty the Executive had to perform was so trying as to put the right man in the right place. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| No Freeman shall ever be disbarred from the use of arms. Arms in the hands of citizens may be used at individual discretion in private self-defense. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free no one ever will. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| No man will ever carry out of the Presidency the reputation which carried him into it. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of the garden. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Nothing is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| On every unauthoritative exercise of power by the legislature must the people rise in rebellion or their silence be construed into a surrender of that power to them? If so, how many rebellions should we have had already? | — Thomas Jefferson |
| One man with courage is a majority. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| One travels more usefully when alone, because he reflects more. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Only aim to do your duty, and mankind will give you credit where you fail. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry. — A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom, 1779 | — Thomas Jefferson |
| 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. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed us, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Peace and abstinence from European interferences are our objects, and so will continue while the present order of things in America remain uninterrupted. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy, and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none. — First inaugural address,1801 | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Politics is such a torment that I advise everyone I love not to mix with it. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Power is not alluring to pure minds. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes ... but when a long train of abuses and usurpations ... 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 | — Thomas Jefferson |
| 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 blind-folded fear. — Letter to Peter Carr, August 10, 1787 | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Resort is hard to ridicule only when reason is against us. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day; but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers, too plainly prove a deliberate, systematical plan of reducing us to slavery | — Thomas Jefferson |
| So confident am I in the intentions, as well as wisdom, of the government, that I shall always be satisfied that what is not done, either cannot, or ought not to be done. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question. — First Inagural Adddress, 1801 | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Speeches that are measured by the hour will die with the hour. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Taste cannot be controlled by law. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| That government is the strongest of which every man feels himself a part. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| The advertisement is the most truthful part of a newspaper. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| 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. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| The earth belongs to the living, not to the dead. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| The glow of one warm thought is to me worth more than money. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| The good opinion of mankind, like the lever of Archimedes, with the given fulcrum, moves the world. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| The greatest [calamity] which could befall [us would be] submission to a government of unlimited powers.
— Declaration and Protest of Virgina, 1825 | — Thomas Jefferson |
| The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| The moment a person forms a theory, his imagination sees in every object only the traits which favor that theory. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| The most effectual means of preventing [the perversion of power into tyranny are] to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large, and more especially to give them knowledge of those facts which history exhibits, that possessed thereby of the experience of other ages and countries, they may be enabled to know ambition under all its shapes, and prompt to exert their natural powers to defeat its purposes.
— Diffusion of Knowledge Bill, 1779 | — Thomas Jefferson |
| The most successful war seldom pays for its losses. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| The natural cause of the human mind is certainly from credulity to skepticism. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| The people… to be encouraged in all cases to follow truth as the only safe guide, and to eschew error, which bewilders us in one false consequence after another in endless succession
— To John Adams, 1819 | — Thomas Jefferson |
| The price of freedom is eternal vigilance | — Thomas Jefferson |
| The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| The second office in the government is honorable and easy; the first is but a splendid misery. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| The spirit of this country is totally adverse to a large military force. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| The way to have good and safe government is not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to everyone exactly the functions he is competent [to perform best]. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| The way to silence religious disputes is to take no notice of them. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest
— Summary view of the Rights of British American – 1774 | — Thomas Jefferson |
| The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| The world is indebted for all triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| There is not a truth existing which I fear... or would wish unknown to the whole world. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| To penetrate and dissipate these clouds of darkness, the general mind must be strengthened by education. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Truth and reason are eternal. They have prevailed. And they will eternally prevail; however, in times and places they may be overborne for a while by violence, military, civil, or ecclesiastical
— 1810 | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Truth is certainly a branch of morality and a very important one to society. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Truth is great and will prevail if left to herself;… she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflicts unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate, errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.
— Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom, 1779 | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Truth will do well enough if left to shift for herself. She seldom has received much aid from the power of great men, to whom she is rarely know and seldom welcome. She has no need of force to procure entrance into the minds of men
— 1776 | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Walking is the best possible exercise. Habituate yourself to walk very fast. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| We are bound to defray expenses [of the war] within our own time, and are unauthorized to burden posterity with them.... We shall all consider ourselves morally bound to pay them ourselves and consequently within the life [expectancy] of the majority | — Thomas Jefferson |
| We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| We did not raise armies for glory or for conquest. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| 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. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| We never repent of having eaten too little. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| When a man assumes a public trust he should consider himself a public property. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another, and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| When angry count to ten before you speak. If very angry, count to one hundred. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Whenever you do a thing, act as if all the world were watching. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| Wisdom I know is social. She seeks her fellows. But Beauty is jealous, and illy bears the presence of a rival. | — Thomas Jefferson |
| You seem ... to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions; a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy... The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal.
— 1820 | — Thomas Jefferson |
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A collection of notable quotations from a variety of Early Modern Era individuals. See the Guide for more details.
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