Thomas Jefferson Quotes
Thomas Jefferson Quotes. Below is a collection of famous Thomas Jefferson quotes. Here you can find the most popular and greatest quotes by Thomas Jefferson. Share these quotations with your friends and family.
The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object.
By Thomas Jefferson
Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on [political offices], a rottenness begins in his conduct.
By Thomas Jefferson
We do not mean to count or weigh our contributions by any standard other than that of our abilities.
By Thomas Jefferson
These are our grievances which we have thus laid before his majesty with that freedom of language and sentiment which becomes a free people, c...
By Thomas Jefferson
The art of life is the art of avoiding pain; and he is the best pilot, who steers clearest of the rocks and shoals with which it is beset.
By Thomas Jefferson
Of all the errors which can possibly be committed to the education of youth, that of sending them to Europe is the most fatal. I see [clearly]...
By Thomas Jefferson
No body can conceive that nature ever intended to throw away a Newton upon the occupations of a crown. It would have been a prodigality for wh...
By Thomas Jefferson
My passion strengthens daily to quit political turmoil, and retire into the bosom of my family, the only scene of sincere and pure happiness.
By Thomas Jefferson
I was duped ... by the Secretary of the treasury [Alexander Hamilton], and made a fool for forwarding his schemes, not then sufficiently under...
By Thomas Jefferson
I note what you say of the late disturbances in your College. These dissensions are a great affliction on the American schools, and a principa...
By Thomas Jefferson
I could say much about politics, our only entertainment here, but you would not care a fig about that.
By Thomas Jefferson
I duly acknowledge that I have gone through a long life, with fewer circumstances of affliction than are the lot of most men. Uninterrupted he...
By Thomas Jefferson
I always was of opinion that the placing a youth to study with an attorney was rather a prejudice than a help.... The only help a youth wants ...
By Thomas Jefferson
I am tired of a life of contention, and of being the personal object for the hatred of every man, who hates the present state of things.
By Thomas Jefferson
Health, learning and virtue will ensure your happiness; they will give you a quiet conscience, private esteem and public honour.
By Thomas Jefferson
Bigotry is the disease of ignorance, of morbid minds; enthusiasm of the free and buoyant. Education and free discussion are the antidotes of b...
By Thomas Jefferson
But of all the views of this law [universal education] none is more important, none more legitimate, than that of rendering the people the saf...
By Thomas Jefferson
Be a listener only, keep within yourself, and endeavor to establish with yourself the habit of silence, especially in politics.
By Thomas Jefferson
[W]e should talk over the lessons of the day, or lose them in Musick, Chess, or the merriments of our family companions. The heart thus lighte...
By Thomas Jefferson
If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, and give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses; And the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they do now, on oatmeal and potatoes, have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account; but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains around the necks of our fellow sufferers; And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for a second, that second for a third, and so on 'til the bulk of the society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery, to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering ... And the forehorse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression.
By Thomas Jefferson
The care of every man's soul belongs to himself. But what if he neglect the care of it? Well what if he neglect the care of his health or his estate, which would more nearly relate to the state. Will the magistrate make a law that he not be poor or sick? Laws provide against injury from others; but not from ourselves. God himself will not save men against their wills.
By Thomas Jefferson
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.
By Thomas Jefferson