Quotes By Thomas Jefferson

In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.

There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents.

I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

It takes time to persuade men to do even what is for their own good.

An enemy generally says and believes what he wishes.

Walking is the best possible exercise. Habituate yourself to walk very fast.

Only aim to do your duty, and mankind will give you credit where you fail.

Delay is preferable to error.

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.

It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God.

It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.

We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed.

Politics is such a torment that I advise everyone I love not to mix with it.

The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.

Money, not morality, is the principle commerce of civilized nations.

Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.

It is our duty still to endeavor to avoid war; but if it shall actually take place, no matter by whom brought on, we must defend ourselves. If our house be on fire, without inquiring whether it was fired from within or without, we must try to extinguish it.

My only fear is that I may live too long. This would be a subject of dread to me.

When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe.

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

Bodily decay is gloomy in prospect, but of all human contemplations the most abhorrent is body without mind.

That government is the strongest of which every man feels himself a part.

A coward is much more exposed to quarrels than a man of spirit.

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.

We may consider each generation as a distinct nation, with a right, by the will of its majority, to bind themselves, but none to bind the succeeding generation, more than the inhabitants of another country.

It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.

Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto.

The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.

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

I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.