Popular

Browse Popular Topics

Quotes by 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
Happiness is not being pained in body or troubled in mind.
– 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
For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their best security.
– 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
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
Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.
– Thomas Jefferson
Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of a Censor - over each other.
– 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
Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government.
– 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
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
As our enemies have found we can reason like men, so now let us show them we can fight like men also.
– 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
A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise 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, and this is necessary to close the circlue of our felicities.
– 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 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