Thomas Jefferson
674 quotes
Biography
Thomas Jefferson was a Founding Father and the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. He was the second vice president under John Adams.
"The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government."
"One loves to possess arms, though they hope never to have occasion for them."
"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."
"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."
"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
"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?"
"Honesty is the first chapter of the book wisdom."
"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."
"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."
"Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions any more than our opinions in physics or geometry..."
"I had rather be shut up in a very modest cottage with my books, my family and a few old friends, dining on simple bacon, and letting the world roll on as it liked, than to occupy the most splendid post, which any human power can give."
"The glow of one warm thought is to me worth more than money."
"I know 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 by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power."
"All should be laid open to you without reserve, for there is not a truth existing which I fear, or would wish unknown to the whole world."
"I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be."
"There is nothing more unequal than the equal treatment of unequal people."
"Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of Liberty."
"I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led."
"I have no ambition to govern men; it is a painful and thankless office."
"not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of . . . but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independent stand we are compelled to take."
"And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor."
"I may grow rich by an art I am compelled to follow; I may recover health by medicines I am compelled to take against my own judgment; but I cannot be saved by a worship I disbelieve and abhor."
"A nation which expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, expects that which never was and never will be."
"While the art of printing is left to us science can never be retrograde; what is once acquired of real knowledge can never be lost."
"They (religions) dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subversions of the duperies on which they live."