Quotes By Thomas Jefferson

Never spend your money before you have earned it.

I own that I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.

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.

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

Resort is had to ridicule only when reason is against us.

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

I cannot live without books.

The natural cause of the human mind is certainly from credulity to skepticism.

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.

There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me.

Truth is certainly a branch of morality and a very important one to society.

Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.

To penetrate and dissipate these clouds of darkness, the general mind must be strengthened by education.

He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.

Do not bite at the bait of pleasure, till you know there is no hook beneath it.

I believe that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another.

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.

Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.

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.