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Be polite to all, but intimate with few.
- Thomas Jefferson
The natural cause of the human mind
is certainly from credulity to skepticism.
- Thomas Jefferson
Speeches that are measured by the hour
will die with the hour.
- Thomas Jefferson
In every country and every age,
the priest had been hostile to Liberty.
- Thomas Jefferson
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The man who reads nothing at all
is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.
- Thomas Jefferson
Advertisements contain the only truths
to be relied on in a newspaper.
- Thomas Jefferson
Do not bite at the bait of pleasure,
till you know there is no hook beneath it.
- Thomas Jefferson
Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion.
The several sects perform the office of a Censor -
over each other.
- Thomas Jefferson
The way to silence religious disputes is to take no notice of them.
- Thomas Jefferson
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
I never considered a difference of opinion
in politics, in religion, in philosophy,
as cause for withdrawing from a friend.
- 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
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
All tyranny needs to gain a foothold
is for people of good conscience to remain silent.
- Thomas Jefferson
It is neither wealth nor splendor;
but tranquility and occupation which give you happiness.
- Thomas Jefferson
The moment a person forms a theory,
his imagination sees in every object
only the traits which favor that theory.
- Thomas Jefferson
Bodily decay is gloomy in prospect,
but of all human contemplations,
the most abhorrent is body without mind.
- Thomas Jefferson
It is always better to have no ideas than false ones;
to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong.
- Thomas Jefferson
When we get piled upon one another
in large cities, as in Europe,
we shall become as corrupt as Europe.
- Thomas Jefferson
Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another
as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.
- Thomas Jefferson
Whenever the people are well-informed,
they can be trusted with their own government.
- Thomas Jefferson
He who knows nothing is closer to the truth
than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.
- Thomas Jefferson
Conquest is not in our principles.
It is inconsistent with our government.
- Thomas Jefferson
It is more dangerous that even
a guilty person should be punished
without the forms of law
than that he should escape.
- Thomas Jefferson
When a man assumes a public trust
he should consider himself a public property.
- Thomas Jefferson
The earth belongs to the living, not to the dead.
- Thomas Jefferson
Leave no authority existing not responsible to the people.
- Thomas Jefferson
A democracy is nothing more than mob rule,
where fifty-one percent of the people
may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.
- attributed to Thomas Jefferson
Whenever you do a thing,
act as if all the world were watching.
- Thomas Jefferson
History, in general, only informs us of what bad government is.
- Thomas Jefferson
Commerce with all nations,
alliance with none,
should be our motto.
- Thomas Jefferson
How much pain they have cost us,
the evils which have never happened.
- Thomas Jefferson
The god who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time:
the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them.
- Thomas Jefferson
I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance
or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others.
- 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
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
I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.
- 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
The most successful war seldom pays for its losses.
- Thomas Jefferson
One travels more usefully when alone, because he reflects more.
- 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
Always take hold of things by the smooth handle.
- Thomas Jefferson
Timid men prefer the calm of despotism
to the tempestuous sea of liberty.
- Thomas Jefferson
When angry, count to ten before you speak.
If very angry, count to one hundred.
- Thomas Jefferson
My reading of history convinces me that most bad government
results from too much government.
- Thomas Jefferson
I abhor war and view it as the greatest scourge of mankind.
- Thomas Jefferson
Resort is had to ridicule only when reason is against us.
- Thomas Jefferson
There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me.
- 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 injured friend is the bitterest of foes.
- Thomas Jefferson
It is in our lives and not our words
that our religion must be read.
- Thomas Jefferson
I am mortified to be told that, in the United States of America,
the sale of a book can become a subject of inquiry,
and of criminal inquiry too.
- Thomas Jefferson
There is a natural aristocracy among men.
The grounds of this are virtue and talents.
- 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
Force is the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism.
- Thomas Jefferson
Nothing can stop the man with the right
mental attitude from achieving his goal;
nothing on earth can help the man
with the wrong mental attitude.
- Thomas Jefferson
Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on
does not constitute so strong an attachment
as that from which they draw their gains.
- 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
Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies.
- Thomas Jefferson
Don't talk about what you have done
or what you are going to do.
- Thomas Jefferson
We did not raise armies for glory or for conquest.
- Thomas Jefferson
Do you want to know who you are?
Don't ask. Act!
Action will delineate and define you.
- Thomas Jefferson
The glow of one warm thought
is to me worth more than money.
- Thomas Jefferson
I have no fear that the result of our experiment
will be that men may be trusted to
govern themselves without a master.
- Thomas Jefferson
The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction,
is the first and only object of good government.
- Thomas Jefferson
Nothing is unchangeable but the inherent
and unalienable rights of man.
- 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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