Thomas Jefferson Quotes

[F]alsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions.

The press is the best instrument for enlightening the mind of man, and improving him as a rational, moral and social being

Bank-paper must be suppressed, and the circulating medium must be restored to the nation to whom it belongs.

Scenes are now to take place as will open the eyes of credulity and of insanity itself, to the dangers of a paper medium abandoned to the discretion of avarice and of swindlers.

When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe.

I have ever deemed it more honorable and more profitable, too, to set a good example than to follow a bad one.

The rational and peaceable instrument of reform, the suffrage of the people.

The further the departure from direct and constant control by the citizens, the less has the government of the ingredient of republicanism.

Walking is the best possible exercise. Habituate yourself to walk very far.

There is no act, however virtuous, for which ingenuity may not find some bad motive.

People generally have more feeling for canals and roads than education. However, I hope we can advance them with equal pace.

Nothing but free argument, raillery and even ridicule will preserve the purity of religion.

Never trouble another for what you can do yourself

A mind always employed is always happy. This is the true secret, the grand recipe, for felicity.

If any state in the Union will declare that it prefers separation... to a continuance in union... I have no hesitation in saying, 'let us separate.

Most men die at age 25, but aren't buried until 70.

It is strangely absurd to suppose that a million of human beings, collected together, are not under the same moral laws which bind each of them separately.

A morsel of genuine history is a thing so rare as to be always valuable.

He, who steadily observes those moral precepts in which all religions concur, will never be questioned at the gates of heaven as to the dogmas in which they all differ.

Was the government to prescribe to us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are now.

I view great cities as pestilential to the morals, the health, and the liberties of man.

It is to secure our rights that we resort to government at all.

Every man has two countries: his own and France.

Action will delineate and define you.

The doctrines of Jesus are simple, and tend to all the happiness of man.

Nothing can now be believed that is seen in a newspaper.

A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.

Not less than two hours a day should be devoted to exercise.

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

Our civil rights have no dependence upon our religious opinions more than our opinions in physics or geometry.

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

I know of no safe depository of the ultimate power of the society but the people themselves.

I look to the diffusion of light and education as the resource most to be relied on for ameliorating the condition, promoting the virtue and advancing the happiness of man.

If I had to choose between government without newspapers, and newspapers without government, I wouldn't hesitate to choose the latter

The most uninformed mind with a healthy body is happier than the wisest valetudinarian.

No nation is drunken where wine is cheap, and none sober where the dearness of wine substitutes ardent spirits as the common beverage

The art of life is the art of avoiding pain.

Without virtue, happiness cannot be.

I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it.

If I am to meet with a disappointment, the sooner I know it, the more of life I shall have to wear it off.

Shake hands with Pain, give greeting unto Grief, Those angels in disguise, and thy glad soul From height to height, from star to shining star, Shall climb and claim blest immortality.

Questions of natural right are triable by their conformity with the moral sense and reason of man.

We have no right to prejudice another in his civil enjoyments because he is of another church.

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

I cannot live without books.

It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.

Neither Pagan nor Mahamedan nor Jew ought to be excluded from the civil rights of the Commonwealth because of his religion. -quoting John Locke's argument.

It is reasonable that everyone who asks justice should do justice

One man with courage is a majority.

It should be our endeavor to cultivate the peace and friendship of every nation, even of that which has injured us most.