Thomas Jefferson Quotes

"Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom."

"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."

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

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

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

"When angry count to ten before you speak. If very angry, count to one hundred."

"Do you want to know who you are? Don't ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you."

"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever."

"I believe that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another."

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

"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual."

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

"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."

"Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government."

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

"Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none."

"Never spend your money before you have earned it."

"Whenever you do a thing, act as if all the world were watching."

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

"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."

"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

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

"It is neither wealth nor splendor; but tranquility and occupation which give you happiness."

"The most successful war seldom pays for its losses."

"Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."

"How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened."

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

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

"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."

"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country."