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Every government degenerates when trusted
to the rulers of the people alone.
The people themselves are its only safe depositories.
- Thomas Jefferson
Advertisements contain the only truths
to be relied on in a newspaper.
- Thomas Jefferson
Speeches that are measured by the hour
will die with the hour.
- Thomas Jefferson
The natural cause of the human mind
is certainly from credulity to skepticism.
- Thomas Jefferson
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Politics is such a torment that I advise everyone
I love not to mix with it.
- Thomas Jefferson
Question with boldness even the existence of a God;
because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason,
than that of blind-folded fear.
- Thomas Jefferson
Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion.
The several sects perform the office of a Censor -
over each other.
- Thomas Jefferson
The man who reads nothing at all
is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.
- Thomas Jefferson
The way to silence religious disputes is to take no notice of them.
- Thomas Jefferson
I never considered a difference of opinion
in politics, in religion, in philosophy,
as cause for withdrawing from a friend.
- Thomas Jefferson
In every country and every age,
the priest had been hostile to Liberty.
- Thomas Jefferson
Do not bite at the bait of pleasure,
till you know there is no hook beneath it.
- Thomas Jefferson
I tremble for my country when I reflect that God
is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.
- Thomas Jefferson
Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations;
entangling alliances with none.
- Thomas Jefferson
Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted
with the government of himself.
Can he, then be trusted with the government of others?
Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him?
Let history answer this question.
- Thomas Jefferson
All tyranny needs to gain a foothold
is for people of good conscience to remain silent.
- Thomas Jefferson
Bodily decay is gloomy in prospect,
but of all human contemplations,
the most abhorrent is body without mind.
- Thomas Jefferson
It is neither wealth nor splendor;
but tranquility and occupation which give you happiness.
- Thomas Jefferson
We are not afraid to follow truth
wherever it may lead,
nor to tolerate any error
so long as reason is left free to combat it.
- Thomas Jefferson
It takes time to persuade men to do even
what is for their own good.
- Thomas Jefferson
I find that he is happiest
of whom the world says least, good or bad.
- Thomas Jefferson
The moment a person forms a theory,
his imagination sees in every object
only the traits which favor that theory.
- Thomas Jefferson
The glow of one warm thought
is to me worth more than money.
- 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
Truth is certainly a branch of morality
and a very important one to society.
- Thomas Jefferson
I have seen enough of one war never to wish to see another.
- Thomas Jefferson
Money, not morality, is the principle commerce of civilized nations.
- Thomas Jefferson
The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction,
is the first and only object of good government.
- Thomas Jefferson
Timid men prefer the calm of despotism
to the tempestuous sea of liberty.
- Thomas Jefferson
He who knows best knows how little he knows.
- Thomas Jefferson
Power is not alluring to pure minds.
- Thomas Jefferson
My reading of history convinces me that most bad government
results from too much government.
- Thomas Jefferson
Wisdom I know is social.
She seeks her fellows.
But Beauty is jealous,
and illy bears the presence of a rival.
- Thomas Jefferson
Experience hath 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
An enemy generally says and believes what he wishes.
- Thomas Jefferson
Only aim to do your duty,
and mankind will give you credit where you fail.
- Thomas Jefferson
One travels more usefully when alone, because he reflects more.
- Thomas Jefferson
Commerce with all nations,
alliance with none,
should be our motto.
- Thomas Jefferson
Enlighten the people generally,
and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind
will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.
- Thomas Jefferson
The natural progress of things is for liberty
to yield and government to gain ground.
- Thomas Jefferson
Leave no authority existing not responsible to the people.
- Thomas Jefferson
I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month,
and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it.
- Thomas Jefferson
I have sworn upon the altar of God,
eternal hostility against every form of tyranny
over the mind of man.
- Thomas Jefferson
I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.
- Thomas Jefferson
I find that the harder I work,
the more luck I seem to have.
- Thomas Jefferson
Conquest is not in our principles.
It is inconsistent with our government.
- 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
It is always better to have no ideas than false ones;
to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong.
- Thomas Jefferson
We are not to expect to be translated from
despotism to liberty in a featherbed.
- Thomas Jefferson
Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy,
and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it.
- Thomas Jefferson
Never spend your money before you have earned it.
- Thomas Jefferson
It is incumbent on every generation
to pay its own debts as it goes.
A principle which if acted on would
save one-half the wars of the world.
- Thomas Jefferson
The interests of a nation, when well understood,
will be found to coincide with their moral duties.
- Thomas Jefferson
Ignorance is preferable to error,
and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing
than he who believes what is wrong.
- 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
War is an instrument entirely inefficient
toward redressing wrong;
and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses.
- Thomas Jefferson
No duty the Executive had to perform was so trying
as to put the right man in the right place.
- Thomas Jefferson
Every citizen should be a soldier.
This was the case with the Greeks and Romans,
and must be that of every free state.
- Thomas Jefferson
Resort is had to ridicule only when reason is against us.
- Thomas Jefferson
Mankind are more disposed to suffer,
while evils are sufferable,
than to right themselves by abolishing
the forms to which they are accustomed.
- Thomas Jefferson
If there is one principle more deeply rooted
in the mind of every American,
it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest.
- Thomas Jefferson
It is in our lives and not our words
that our religion must be read.
- Thomas Jefferson
How much pain they have cost us,
the evils which have never happened.
- 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
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time
with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
- Thomas Jefferson
I believe that every human mind feels pleasure
in doing good to another.
- 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
The second office in the government is honorable and easy;
the first is but a splendid misery.
- Thomas Jefferson
There is a natural aristocracy among men.
The grounds of this are virtue and talents.
- Thomas Jefferson
There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me.
- Thomas Jefferson
No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth,
and no culture comparable to that of the garden.
- Thomas Jefferson
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May the world be kind to you,
and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
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