Authors
Topics
Lists
Pictures
Resources
More about Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson -
Man
Quotes
122 Sourced Quotes
View all Thomas Jefferson Quotes
Source
Report...
When a man assumes a public trust, he should consider himself as public property.
Thomas Jefferson
Source
Report...
The care of every man's soul belongs to himself. But what if he neglect the care of it? Well what if he neglect the care of his health or his estate, which would more nearly relate to the state. Will the magistrate make a law that he not be poor or sick? Laws provide against injury from others; but not from ourselves. God himself will not save men against their wills.
Thomas Jefferson
Source
Report...
The hour of emancipation is advancing... this enterprise is for the young; for those who can follow it up, and bear it through to its consummation. It shall have all my prayers, and these are the only weapons of an old man.
Thomas Jefferson
Source
Report...
The evils which of necessity encompass the life of man are sufficiently numerous. Why should we add to them by voluntarily distressing and destroying one another? Peace, brothers, is better than war. In a long and bloody war, we lose many friends, and gain nothing. Let us then live in peace and friendship together, doing to each other all the good we can.
Thomas Jefferson
Source
Report...
No provision in our Constitution ought to be dearer to man than that which protects the rights of conscience against the enterprises of the civil authority.
Thomas Jefferson
Source
Report...
I can never join Calvin in addressing his god. He was indeed an Atheist, which I can never be; or rather his religion was Daemonism. If ever man worshipped a false god, he did. The being described in his 5 points is not the God whom you and I acknowledge and adore, the Creator and benevolent governor of the world; but a daemon of malignant spirit. It would be more pardonable to believe in no god at all, than to blaspheme him by the atrocious attributes of Calvin. Indeed I think that every Christian sect gives a great handle to Atheism by their general dogma that, without a revelation, there would not be sufficient proof of the being of a god.
Thomas Jefferson
Source
Report...
Every honest man will suppose honest acts to flow from honest principles, and the rogues may rail without intermission.
Thomas Jefferson
Source
Report...
No man will labor for himself who can make another labor for him.
Thomas Jefferson
Source
Report...
I have so much confidence in the good sense of man, and his qualifications for self-government, that I am never afraid of the issue where reason is left free to exert her force.
Thomas Jefferson
Source
Report...
A coward is much more exposed to quarrels than a man of spirit.
Thomas Jefferson
Source
Report...
In the fevered state of our country, no good can ever result from any attempt to set one of these fiery zealots to rights, either in fact or principle. They are determined as to the facts they will believe, and the opinions on which they will act. Get by them, therefore, as you would by an angry bull; it is not for a man of sense to dispute the road with such an animal.
Thomas Jefferson
Source
Report...
A patient pursuit of facts, and cautious combination and comparison of them, is the drudgery to which man is subjected by his Master, if he wishes to attain sure knowledge.
Thomas Jefferson
Source
Report...
No experiment can be more interesting than that we are now trying, and which we trust will end in establishing the fact, that man may be governed by reason and truth. Our first object should therefore be, to leave open to him all the avenues to truth. The most effectual hitherto found, is the freedom of the press. It is, therefore, the first shut up by those who fear the investigation of their actions.
Thomas Jefferson
Source
Report...
All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.
Thomas Jefferson
Source
Report...
He who made us would have been a pitiful bungler, if he had made the rules of our moral conduct a matter of science. For one man of science, there are thousands who are not. What would have become of them? Man was destined for society. His morality, therefore, was to be formed to this object. He was endowed with a sense of right and wrong, merely relative to this.
Thomas Jefferson
Source
Report...
Perfection in wisdom, as well as in integrity, is neither required nor expected in these agents (public servants). It belongs not to man. The wise know too well their weaknesses to assume infallibility; and he who knows most, knows best how little he knows.
Thomas Jefferson
Source
Report...
But though an old man, I am but a young gardener.
Thomas Jefferson
Source
Report...
Man is an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all education in him. From his cradle to his grave he is learning to do what he sees others do.
Thomas Jefferson
Source
Report...
I am tired of a life of contention, and of being the personal object for the hatred of every man, who hates the present state of things.
Thomas Jefferson
Source
Report...
No man has greater confidence than I have in the spirit of the people, to a rational extent. Whatever they can, they will.
Thomas Jefferson
Source
Report...
No race of kings has ever presented above one man of common sense in twenty generations.
Thomas Jefferson
Source
Report...
I repair, then, fellow-citizens, to the post you have assigned me. With experience enough in subordinate offices to have seen the difficulties of this the greatest of all, I have learnt to expect that it will rarely fall to the lot of imperfect man to retire from this station with the reputation and the favor which bring him into it.
Thomas Jefferson
Source
Report...
The principles on which we engaged, of which the charter of our independence is the record, were sanctioned by the laws of our being, and we but obeyed them in pursuing undeviatingly the course they called for. It issued finally in that inestimable state of freedom which alone can ensure to man the enjoyment of his equal rights.
Thomas Jefferson
Source
Report...
Questions of natural right are triable by their conformity with the moral sense and reason of man.
Thomas Jefferson
Source
Report...
Resolved [...] that it would be a dangerous delusion were a confidence in the men of our choice to silence our fears for the safety of our rights; that confidence is every where the parent of despotism; free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence; it is jealousy, and not confidence, which prescribes limited constitutions to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power; that our Constitution has accordingly fixed the limits to which, and no farther, our confidence may go; [...]. In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.
Thomas Jefferson
1
2
3
4
5
Quote of the day
Ultimately, America's answer to the intolerant man is diversity, the very diversity which our heritage of religious freedom has inspired.
Robert F. Kennedy
Thomas Jefferson
Creative Commons
Born:
April 13, 1743
Died:
July 4, 1826
(aged 83)
More about Thomas Jefferson...
Featured Authors
Lists
Predictions that didn't happen
If it's on the Internet it must be true
Remarkable Last Words (or Near-Last Words)
Picture Quotes
Confucius
Philip James Bailey
Eleanor Roosevelt
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Popular Topics
life
love
nature
time
god
power
human
mind
work
art
heart
thought
men
day
×
Lib Quotes