Thomas Jefferson Quotes

994 Sourced Quotes

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

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
The execution of the laws is more important than the making of them.

Thomas Jefferson
Abstracted from home, I know no happiness in this world.

Thomas Jefferson
We see the wisdom of Solon's remark, that no more good must be attempted than the nation can bear.

Thomas Jefferson
It is not to the moderation and justice of others we are to trust for fair and equal access to market with out productions, or for our due share in the transportation of them; but to our own means of independence, and the firm will to use them.

Thomas Jefferson
The opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction.

Thomas Jefferson
An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens.

Thomas Jefferson
As, for the safety of society, we commit honest maniacs to Bedlam, so judges should be withdrawn from their bench, whose erroneous biases are leading us to dissolution. It may indeed injure them in fame or in fortune; but it saves the republic, which is the first and supreme law.

Thomas Jefferson
While wading through the whimsies, the puerilities, and unintelligible jargon of this work [Plato's Republic], I laid it down often to ask myself how it could have been that the world should have so long consented to give reputation to such nonsense as this?

Thomas Jefferson
Idleness begets ennui, ennui the hypochondriac, and that a diseased body. No laborious person was ever yet hysterical.

Thomas Jefferson
[All men] are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.

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 think with the Romans, that the general of today should be a soldier tomorrow if necessary.

Thomas Jefferson
From the nature and purpose of civil institutions, all the lands within the limits which any particular society has circumscribed around itself are assumed by that society, and subject to their allotment only. This may be done by themselves, assembled collectively, or by their legislature, to whom they may have delegated sovereign authority; and if they are alloted in neither of these ways, each individual of the society may appropriate to himself such lands as he finds vacant, and occupancy will give him title.

Thomas Jefferson
We have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, self-preservation in the other.

Thomas Jefferson
I find that he is happiest of whom the world says least, good or bad.

Thomas Jefferson
The purse of the people is the real seat of sensibility. Let it be drawn upon largely, and they will then listen to truths which could not excite them through any other organ.

Thomas Jefferson
If the obstacles of bigotry and priestcraft can be surmounted, we may hope that common sense will suffice to do everything else.

Thomas Jefferson
The dead? But the dead have no rights. They are nothing; and nothing cannot own something. Where there is no substance, there can be no accident. This corporeal globe, and everything upon it, belong to its present corporeal inhabitants, during their generation. They alone have a right to direct what is the concern of themselves alone, and to declare the law of that direction; and this declaration can only be made by their majority. That majority, then, has a right to depute representatives to a convention, and to make the constitution what they think will be the best for themselves.

Thomas Jefferson