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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.
Thomas Jefferson
A coward is much more exposed to quarrels than a man of spirit.
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.
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 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.
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 injured friend is the bitterest of foes.
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
Be polite to all, but intimate with few.
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
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
Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto.
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.
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.
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
Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... 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.
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 government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.
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
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.
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
Force is the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism.
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
Happiness is not being pained in body or troubled in mind.
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
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
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 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 every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another.
Thomas Jefferson
I cannot live without books.
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 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 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.
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 of 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.
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 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 those attending too small a degree 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
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 defense of our persons and properties under actual violation, we took up arms. When that violence shall be removed, when hostilities shall cease on the part of the aggressors, hostilities shall cease on our part also.
Thomas Jefferson
In every country and every age, the priest had been hostile to Liberty.
Thomas Jefferson
In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.
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
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 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 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
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
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
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 be debarred the use of arms.
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
