For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so,
a well-organized and armed militia is their best security.
- Thomas Jefferson
I tremble for my country when I reflect that God
is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.
- Thomas Jefferson
I never considered a difference of opinion
in politics, in religion, in philosophy,
as cause for withdrawing from a friend.
- Thomas Jefferson 
The natural cause of the human mind
is certainly from credulity to skepticism.
- Thomas Jefferson
Advertisements contain the only truths
to be relied on in a newspaper.
- Thomas Jefferson
Politics is such a torment that I advise everyone
I love not to mix with it.
- Thomas Jefferson
Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion.
The several sects perform the office of a Censor -
over each other.
- Thomas Jefferson
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.
- Thomas Jefferson
The man who reads nothing at all
is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.
- Thomas Jefferson
Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted
with the government of himself.
Can he, then be trusted with the government of others?
Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him?
Let history answer this question.
- Thomas Jefferson
In every country and every age,
the priest had been hostile to Liberty.
- Thomas Jefferson
The way to silence religious disputes is to take no notice of them.
- Thomas Jefferson
Speeches that are measured by the hour
will die with the hour.
- Thomas Jefferson
Do not bite at the bait of pleasure,
till you know there is no hook beneath it.
- Thomas Jefferson
Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations;
entangling alliances with none.
- Thomas Jefferson
All tyranny needs to gain a foothold
is for people of good conscience to remain silent.
- Thomas Jefferson
It is neither wealth nor splendor;
but tranquility and occupation which give you happiness.
- Thomas Jefferson
The moment a person forms a theory,
his imagination sees in every object
only the traits which favor that theory.
- 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
I find that he is happiest
of whom the world says least, good or bad.
- Thomas Jefferson
Bodily decay is gloomy in prospect,
but of all human contemplations,
the most abhorrent is body without mind.
- Thomas Jefferson
It takes time to persuade men to do even
what is for their own good.
- Thomas Jefferson
Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show
by what road it will pass to destruction,
to wit: by consolidation of power first,
and then corruption, its necessary consequence.
- Thomas Jefferson
We may consider each generation as a distinct nation,
with a right, by the will of its majority,
to bind themselves, but none to
bind the succeeding generation,
more than the inhabitants of another country.
- Thomas Jefferson
The glow of one warm thought
is to me worth more than money.
- Thomas Jefferson
Conquest is not in our principles.
It is inconsistent with our government.
- Thomas Jefferson
Fix reason firmly in her seat,
and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion.
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 blindfolded fear.
- Thomas Jefferson
Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy,
and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it.
- Thomas Jefferson
I think with the Romans, that the general of today
should be a soldier tomorrow if necessary.
- Thomas Jefferson
It is more dangerous that even
a guilty person should be punished
without the forms of law
than that he should escape.
- Thomas Jefferson
Nothing is unchangeable but the inherent
and unalienable rights of man.
- Thomas Jefferson
The interests of a nation, when well understood,
will be found to coincide with their moral duties.
- Thomas Jefferson
If the children are untaught,
their ignorance and vices will in future life
cost us much dearer in their consequences
than it would have done in their
correction by a good education.
- Thomas Jefferson
Only aim to do your duty,
and mankind will give you credit where you fail.
- Thomas Jefferson
Whenever the people are well-informed,
they can be trusted with their own government.
- Thomas Jefferson
The spirit of this country is totally adverse to a large military force.
- Thomas Jefferson
My reading of history convinces me that most bad government
results from too much government.
- Thomas Jefferson
We did not raise armies for glory or for conquest.
- Thomas Jefferson
Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.
- Thomas Jefferson
(also attributed to Benjamin Franklin and Lord Chesterfield)
Dependence begets subservience and venality,
suffocates the germ of virtue,
and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.
- Thomas Jefferson
I have no ambition to govern men; it is a painful and thankless office.
- Thomas Jefferson
Leave all the afternoon for exercise and recreation,
which are as necessary as reading.
I will rather say more necessary
because health is worth more than learning.
- Thomas Jefferson
When we get piled upon one another
in large cities, as in Europe,
we shall become as corrupt as Europe.
- Thomas Jefferson
Always take hold of things by the smooth handle.
- Thomas Jefferson
Taste cannot be controlled by law.
- Thomas Jefferson
It is incumbent on every generation
to pay its own debts as it goes.
A principle which if acted on would
save one-half the wars of the world.
- Thomas Jefferson
Never spend your money before you have earned it.
- Thomas Jefferson
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time
with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
- Thomas Jefferson
Peace and abstinence from European interferences are our objects,
and so will continue while the present
order of things in America remain uninterrupted.
- Thomas Jefferson
Educate and inform the whole mass of the people ...
They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.
- Thomas Jefferson
I am a great believer in luck
and I find that the harder
I work the more I have of it.
- Thomas Jefferson
So confident am I in the intentions,
as well as wisdom, of the government,
that I shall always be satisfied that what is not done,
either cannot, or ought not to be done.
- Thomas Jefferson
It is error alone which needs the support of government.
Truth can stand by itself.
- Thomas Jefferson
There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me.
- Thomas Jefferson
Do you want to know who you are?
Don't ask. Act!
Action will delineate and define you.
- Thomas Jefferson
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.
- Thomas Jefferson
The earth belongs to the living, not to the dead.
- Thomas Jefferson
I find that the harder I work,
the more luck I seem to have.
- Thomas Jefferson
Whenever you do a thing,
act as if all the world were watching.
- Thomas Jefferson
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny;
when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
- Thomas Jefferson
Timid men prefer the calm of despotism
to the tempestuous sea of liberty.
- Thomas Jefferson
If God is just, I tremble for my country.
- Thomas Jefferson
The whole commerce between master and slave
is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions,
the most unremitting despotism on the one part,
and degrading submissions on the other.
Our children see this, and learn to imitate it.
- Thomas Jefferson
A democracy is nothing more than mob rule,
where fifty-one percent of the people
may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.
- attributed to Thomas Jefferson
The strongest reason for the people
to retain the right to keep and bear arms is,
as a last resort, to protect themselves
against tyranny in government.
- Thomas Jefferson
It is our duty still to endeavor to avoid war;
but if it shall actually take place, no matter by whom brought on,
we must defend ourselves.
If our house be on fire, without inquiring whether
it was fired from within or without,
we must try to extinguish it.
- Thomas Jefferson
No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth,
and no culture comparable to that of the garden.
- Thomas Jefferson
An association of men who will not quarrel with one another
is a thing which has never yet existed,
from the greatest confederacy of nations
down to a town meeting or a vestry.
- Thomas Jefferson
Where the press is free and every man
is able to read, all is safe.
- Thomas Jefferson
How much pain they have cost us,
the evils which have never happened.
- Thomas Jefferson
The god who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time:
the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them.
- Thomas Jefferson
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- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
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