Quotes By Thomas Jefferson

Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.

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.

Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy, and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it.

Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

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.

The way to silence religious disputes is to take no notice of them.

I abhor war and view it as the greatest scourge of mankind.

Whenever you do a thing, act as if all the world were watching.

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.

The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave.

No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free no one ever will.

Taste cannot be controlled by law.

When angry count to ten before you speak. If very angry, count to one hundred.

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.

The moment a person forms a theory, his imagination sees in every object only the traits which favor that theory.

Nothing is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man.

Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of a Censor - over each other.

No man will ever carry out of the Presidency the reputation which carried him into it.

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.

Power is not alluring to pure minds.

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.

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.

One man with courage is a majority.

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.

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.

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.

I think with the Romans, that the general of today should be a soldier tomorrow if necessary.

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.

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.

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.