Quotes By Thomas Jefferson

Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of a Censor - over each other.

When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on.

We did not raise armies for glory or for conquest.

I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.

To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.

Happiness is not being pained in body or troubled in mind.

If God is just, I tremble for my country.

I have no ambition to govern men; it is a painful and thankless office.

He who knows best knows how little he knows.

Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.

One loves to possess arms, though they hope never to have occasion for them.

Never spend your money before you have earned it.

Errors of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.

So confident am I in the intentions, as well as wisdom, of the government, that I shall always be satisfied that what is not done, either cannot, or ought not to be done.

There is not a truth existing which I fear... or would wish unknown to the whole world.

Resort is had to ridicule only when reason is against us.

War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses.

I cannot live without books.

I own that I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.

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.

I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master.

To penetrate and dissipate these clouds of darkness, the general mind must be strengthened by education.

The natural cause of the human mind is certainly from credulity to skepticism.

Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed us, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits.

There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me.

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

Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.

Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.

Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence.

He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.