Thomas Jefferson Quotes

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Nothing betrays imbecility so much as the being insensible of it.

Thomas Jefferson
If a sect arises whose tenets would subvert morals, good sense has fair play and reasons and laughs it out of doors without suffering the State to be troubled with it.

Thomas Jefferson
Take care that you never spell a word wrong. Always before you write a word, consider how it is spelled, and, if you do not remember, turn to a dictionary. It produces great praise to a lady to spell well. to his daughter Martha

Thomas Jefferson
Error is to be pitied and pardoned: it is the weakness of human nature. But vice is a foul blemish, not pardonable in any character.

Thomas Jefferson
I believe we may lessen the danger of buying and selling votes, by making the number of voters too great for any means of purchase. I may further say that I have not observed men's honesty to increase with their riches.

Thomas Jefferson
Those who have once got an ascendancy, and possessed themselves of all the resources of the nation, their revenues and offices, have immense means for retaining their advantage.

Thomas Jefferson
If your letters are as long as the bible, they will appear short to me. Only let them be brim full of affection.

Thomas Jefferson
No person shall be capable of being a delegate for more than three years in any term of six.

Thomas Jefferson
I am anxious to see the doctrine of one god commenced in our state. But the population of my neighborhood is too slender, and is too much divided into other sects to maintain any one preacher well. I must therefore be contented to be an Unitarian by myself, although I know there are many around me who would become so, if once they could hear the questions fairly stated.

Thomas Jefferson
I hold it to be one of the distinguishing excellences of elective over hereditary successions that the talents which nature has provided in sufficient proportion, should be selected by the society for the govenment of their affairs, rather than that this should be be transmitted through the loins of knaves and fools passing from the debauches of the table to those of the bed.

Thomas Jefferson
If there is a gratification which I envy any people in this world it is to your country [Italy] its music. This is the favorite passion of my soul, and fortune has cast my lot in a country where it is in a state of deplorable barbarism.

Thomas Jefferson
A rising nation, spread over a wide and fruitful Land, traversing all the seas with the rich production of their Industry.

Thomas Jefferson
Every nation has a right to govern itself internally under what forms it pleases, and to change these forms at its own will.

Thomas Jefferson
Of all the cankers of human happiness none corrodes with so silent, yet so baneful an influence, as indolence.

Thomas Jefferson
We shall all consider ourselves unauthorized to saddle posterity with our debts, and morally bound to pay them ourselves; and consequently within what may be deemed the period of a generation, or the life of the majority.

Thomas Jefferson
I would observe to you that what is called style in writing or speaking is formed very early in life while the imagination is warm, and impressions are permanent.

Thomas Jefferson
The term Mammal has no exact equivalent in the true vernacular of any modern language, the word itself, like its equivalents, the French Mammifere and the German Saugetheir, being entirely artificial.

Thomas Jefferson
I have indeed two great measures at heart, without which no republic can maintain itself in strength: 1. That of general education, to enable every man to judge for himself what will secure or endanger his freedom. 2. To divide every county into hundreds, of such size that all the children of each will be within reach of a central school in it.

Thomas Jefferson
The happiness of society depends so much on preventing party spirit from infecting the common intercourse of life, that nothing should be spared to harmonize and amalgamate the two parties in social circles.

Thomas Jefferson
Instead of that liberty which takes root and growth in the progress of reason, if recovered by mere force or accident, it becomes with an unprepared people a tyranny still of the many, the few, or the one.

Thomas Jefferson
There are two amendments only which I am anxious for: 1. A bill of rights, which it is so much the interest of all to have that I conceive it must be yielded...2. The restoring of the principle of necessary rotation, particularly to the Senate and Presidency, but most of all to the last...

Thomas Jefferson
In a virtuous and free state, no rewards can be so pleasing to sensible minds, as those which include the approbation of our fellow citizens. My great pain is, lest my poor endeavours should fall short of the kind expectations of my country.

Thomas Jefferson
[T]he people seem to have deposited the monarchical and taken up the republican government with as much ease as would have attended their throwing off an old and putting on a new suit of clothes.

Thomas Jefferson
Whiskey claims to itself alone the exclusive office of sot-making.

Thomas Jefferson
I know nothing more important to inculcate into the minds of young people than the wisdom, the honor, and the blessed comfort of living within their income.

Thomas Jefferson
The late rebellion in Massachusetts has given more alarm than I think it should have done. Calculate that one rebellion in thirteen states in the course of eleven years, is but one for each state in a century and a half. No country should be so long without one. Nor will any degree of power in the hands of government prevent insurrections.

Thomas Jefferson
I duly acknowledge that I have gone through a long life, with fewer circumstances of affliction than are the lot of most men. Uninterrupted health, a competence for every reasonable want, usefulness to my fellow-citizens, a good portion of their esteem, no complaint against the world which has sufficiently honored me, and above all, a family which has blessed me by their affections, and never by their conduct given me a moment's pain.

Thomas Jefferson
Without health there is no happiness. An attention to health, then, should take the place of every other object.

Thomas Jefferson
Had not a conviction of the danger to which an unlimited occupation of the executive chair would expose the republican Constitution of our Government, made it conscientiously a duty to retire when I did, the fear of becoming a dotard and of being insensible of it, would of itself have resisted all solicitations to remain.

Thomas Jefferson
A determination never to do what is wrong, prudence, and good-humor, will go far toward securing to you the estimation of the world.

Thomas Jefferson