Thomas Jefferson > Quotes

“I cannot live without books.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“Do you want to know who you are? Don't ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.”
― 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

“Honesty is the first chapter of the book wisdom.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“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.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“When the people fear the government there is tyranny, when the government fears the people there is liberty.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“Dissent is the highest form of patriotism. [Misattributed]”
― Thomas Jefferson

“On matters of style, swim with the current, on matters of principle, stand like a rock.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“We in America do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“I'm a greater believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it”
― Thomas Jefferson

“The Democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“Question with boldness even the existence of God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“The end of democracy and the defeat of the American Revolution will occur when government falls into the hands of lending institutions and moneyed incorporations.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“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.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“Religious institutions that use government power in support of themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths, or of no faith, undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of an established religion tends to make the clergy unresponsive to their own people, and leads to corruption within religion itself. Erecting the 'wall of separation between church and state,' therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“Occasionally the tree of Liberty must be watered with the blood of Patriots and Tyrants.”
― 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

“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

“Religions are all alike- founded upon fables and mythologies.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are 20 gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“I never told my own religion nor scrutinized that of another. I never attempted to make a convert, nor wished to change another's creed. I am satisfied that yours must be an excellent religion to have produced a life of such exemplary virtue and correctness. For it is in our lives, and not from our words, that our religion must be judged.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“...in war, they will kill some of us; we shall destroy all of them”
― Thomas Jefferson

“Information is the currency of democracy.”
― Thomas Jefferson