Thomas Jefferson Quotes

“A great deal of love given to a few is better than a little to many.”

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

“Be polite to all, but intimate with few.”

“But whether I retire to bed early or late, I rise with the sun.”

“Delay is preferable to error.”

“Do not bite at the bait of pleasure, till you know there is no hook beneath it.”

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

“Don’t talk about what you have done or what you are going to do.”

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

“Every day is lost in which we do not learn something useful. Man has no nobler or more valuable possession than time.”

“Every generation needs a new revolution.”

“Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor.”

“Half a loaf is better than no bread.”

“He who knows best knows how little he knows.”

“He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it the second time.”

“History, in general, only informs us what bad government is.”

“Honesty is the first chapter of the book wisdom.”

“How much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened.”

“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.”

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

“I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery.”

“I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.”

“I'm a greater believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.”

“If our house be on fire, without inquiring whether it was fired from within or without, we must try to extinguish it.”

“Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong.”

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

“Never spend your money before you have it.”

“Nobody is better than you and remember, you are better than nobody.”

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

“Nothing is troublesome that we do willingly.”

“Of all machines, the human heart is the most complicated and inexplicable.”

“Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy, and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it.”

“Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst, and cold.”

“Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions.”

“That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.”

“The art of life is the art of avoiding pain; and he is the best pilot, who steers clearest of the rocks and shoals with which it is beset.”

“The dead should not rule the living.”

“The laws that forbid the carrying of arms… disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes.”

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

“The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.”

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

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

“There is nothing more unequal than the equal treatment of unequal people.”

“Too old to plant trees for my own gratification, I shall do it for my posterity.”

“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.”

“We in America do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate.”

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

“When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.”

“When the government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.”

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

“Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.”

“Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time, who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done, if we are always doing.”

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

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

“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 boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave.”