Thomas Jefferson (?) Quotes

No person shall be capable of being a delegate for more than three years in any term of six.

The Governor would serve a five-year term and be ineligible for reelection.

The patient, treated on the fashionable theory, sometimes gets well in spite of the medicine.

One of my favorite ideas is, never to keep an unnecessary soldier.

If we could believe that Jesus...countenanced the follies, falsehoods and charlatanisms which his biographers father on him, ...the conclusion would be irresistible...that he was an imposter.

The Bible is the cornerstone of liberty ... students perusal of the sacred volume will make us better citizens.

Compulsion in religion is distinguished peculiarly from compulsion in every other thing. ...I cannot be saved by a worship I disbelieve and abhor.

Ministers and merchants love nobody.

As government grows, freedom recedes.

Error is to be pitied and pardoned: it is the weakness of human nature. But vice is a foul blemish, not pardonable in any character.

Honesty and interest are as intimately connected in the public as in the private code of morality.

I have given up newspapers in exchange for Tacitus and Thucydides, for Newton and Euclid; and I find myself much the happier.

If you have any duty which must be done, and it seems disagreeable, do it promptly and have it over.

We often repent of what we have said, but never, never, of that which we have not.

Political interest [can] never be separated in the long run from moral right.

I have ever judged of the religion of others by their lives. For it is in our lives, and not from our works, that our religion must be read.

the field of knolege is the common property of all mankind

the boys of the rising generation are to be the men of the next, and the sole guardians of the principles we deliver over to them.

I don't want them to kill no hog . . . . I want a man to go to that chair, on his own two feet.

Planting is one of my great amusements, and even of those things which can only be for posterity, for a Septuagenary has no right to count on any thing but annuals.

It is surely time for men to think for themselves, and to throw off the authority of names so artificially magnified.

War has been avoided from a due sense of the miseries, and the demoralization it produces, and of the superior blessings of a state of peace and friendship with all mankind.

I value peace, and I should unwillingly see any event take place which would render war a necessary resource.

We love and we value peace; we know its blessings from experience. We abhor the follies of war, and are not untried in its distresses and calamities.

One war, such as that of our Revolution, is enough for one life.

Every male citizen of the commonwealth, liable to taxes or to militia duty in any county, shall have a right to vote for representatives for that county to the legislature.

Reading, reflection and time have convinced me that the interests of society require the observation of those moral precepts only in which all religions agree.

Independence can be trusted nowhere but with the people in mass. They are inherently independent of all but moral law.

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

Taxes should be proportioned to what may be annually spared by the individual.

It must be observed that our revenues are raised almost wholly on imported goods.

I sincerely pray that all the members of the human family may, in the time prescribed by the Father of us all, find themselves securely established in the enjoyment of life, liberty, and happiness.

It is a happy circumstance in human affairs that evils which are not cured in one way will cure themselves in some other.

From the nature of things, every society must at all times possess within itself the sovereign powers of legislation.

The mass of the citizens is the safest depositary of their own rights.

Democrats consider the people as the safest depository of power in the last resort; they cherish them, therefore, and wish to leave in them all the powers to the exercise of which they are competent.

No government can continue good, but under the control of the people.

No other depositories of power [but the people themselves] have ever yet been found, which did not end in converting to their own profit the earnings of those committed to their charge.

I had rather ask an enlargement of power from the nation, where it is found necessary, than to assume it by a construction which would make our powers boundless.

The purpose of establishing different houses of legislation is to introduce the influence of different interests or different principles.

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.

No man will ever bring out of the Presidency the reputation which carries him into it. To myself, personally, it brings nothing but increasing drudgery and daily loss of friends.

Everyone has a natural right to choose that vocation in life which he thinks most likely gives him comfortable subsistence.

No instance exists of a person's writing two language perfectly. That will always appear to be his native language which was most familiar to him in his youth.

It is not too soon to provide by every possible means that as few as possible shall be without a little portion of land. The small landholders are the most precious part of a state.

It is an encouraging observation that no good measure was ever proposed which, if duly pursued, failed to prevail in the end.

It would not be for the public good to have [a majority in Congress of one party] greater [than] two to one.

Those who bear equally the burthens of Government should equally participate of its benefits.

It is as useless to argue with those who have renounced the use of reason as to administer medication to the dead.

...is the spirit of the people an infallible, a permanent reliance? ...the spirit of the times may alter, will alter. Our rulers will become corrupt, our people careless.