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

“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

“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

“Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have. The course of history shows us that as a government grows, liberty decreases.”
― 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

“Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.”
― 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

“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

“If ignorance is bliss, why aren't more people happy?”
― Thomas Jefferson

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

“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 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

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

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

“Those who surrender freedom for security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.”
― 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

“The Price of Freedom is Eternal Vigilance.”
― 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

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

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

“A government afraid of its citizens is a Democracy. Citizens afraid of government is tyranny!”
― Thomas Jefferson

“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.”
― Thomas Jefferson

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

“To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude.”
― 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

“Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice can not sleep forever: that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation is among possible events: that it may become probable by supernatural interference!”
― Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia

“One man with courage is a majority.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“The purpose of government is to enable the people of a nation to live in safety and happiness. Government exists for the interests of the governed, not for the governors.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world and do not find in our particular superstition [Christianity] one redeeming feature.”
― 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

“But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life; and thanks to a benevolent arrangement of things, the greater part of life is sunshine.”
― 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

“Experience has shown, 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

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

“Upon the altar of God I pledge eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man ”
― Thomas Jefferson

“A little rebellion is a good thing. ”
― Thomas Jefferson

“Those who hammer their guns into plows, will plow for those who do not.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“Governments constantly choose between telling lies and fighting wars, with the end result always being the same. One will always lead to the other.”
― Thomas Jefferson