Whenever you do a thing,
act as if all the world were watching.
- Thomas Jefferson
Do not bite at the bait of pleasure,
till you know there is no hook beneath it.
- Thomas Jefferson
Speeches that are measured by the hour
will die with the hour.
- 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
Advertisements contain the only truths
to be relied on in a newspaper.
- Thomas Jefferson
The natural cause of the human mind
is certainly from credulity to skepticism.
- 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
I never considered a difference of opinion
in politics, in religion, in philosophy,
as cause for withdrawing from a friend.
- Thomas Jefferson
Politics is such a torment that I advise everyone
I love not to mix with it.
- Thomas Jefferson
In every country and every age,
the priest had been hostile to Liberty.
- Thomas Jefferson
I tremble for my country when I reflect that God
is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.
- Thomas Jefferson
The way to silence religious disputes is to take no notice of them.
- Thomas Jefferson
Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion.
The several sects perform the office of a Censor -
over each other.
- Thomas Jefferson
The man who reads nothing at all
is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.
- Thomas Jefferson
Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations;
entangling alliances with none.
- Thomas Jefferson
Bodily decay is gloomy in prospect,
but of all human contemplations,
the most abhorrent is body without mind.
- 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
It is neither wealth nor splendor;
but tranquility and occupation which give you happiness.
- Thomas Jefferson
It takes time to persuade men to do even
what is for their own good.
- Thomas Jefferson
The moment a person forms a theory,
his imagination sees in every object
only the traits which favor that theory.
- Thomas Jefferson
All tyranny needs to gain a foothold
is for people of good conscience to remain silent.
- Thomas Jefferson
I find that he is happiest
of whom the world says least, good or bad.
- Thomas Jefferson
I sincerely believe that banking establishments
are more dangerous than standing armies,
and that the principle of spending money
to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding,
is but swindling futurity on a large scale.
- Thomas Jefferson
Walking is the best possible exercise.
Habituate yourself to walk very fast.
- Thomas Jefferson
Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices,
a rottenness begins in his conduct.
- Thomas Jefferson
Timid men prefer the calm of despotism
to the tempestuous sea of liberty.
- Thomas Jefferson
The interests of a nation, when well understood,
will be found to coincide with their moral duties.
- Thomas Jefferson
I would rather be exposed to
the inconveniences attending too much liberty
than those attending too small a degree of it.
- Thomas Jefferson
Leave no authority existing not responsible to the people.
- Thomas Jefferson
I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.
- Thomas Jefferson
The Creator has not thought proper
to mark those in the forehead
who are of stuff to make good generals.
We are first, therefore, to seek them blindfold,
and then let them learn the trade
at the expense of great losses.
- Thomas Jefferson
It is always better to have no ideas than false ones;
to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong.
- Thomas Jefferson
If there is one principle more deeply rooted
in the mind of every American,
it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest.
- Thomas Jefferson
As our enemies have found, we can reason like men,
so now let us show them we can fight like men also.
- Thomas Jefferson
We did not raise armies for glory or for conquest.
- Thomas Jefferson
Nothing is unchangeable but the inherent
and unalienable rights of man.
- 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
In matters of style, swim with the current;
in matters of principle, stand like a rock.
- Thomas Jefferson
The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave.
- Thomas Jefferson
I own that I am not a friend to a very energetic government.
It is always oppressive.
- Thomas Jefferson
It is in our lives and not our words
that our religion must be read.
- Thomas Jefferson
We never repent of having eaten too little.
- Thomas Jefferson
He who knows nothing is closer to the truth
than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.
- Thomas Jefferson
Information is the currency of democracy.
- Thomas Jefferson
Dependence begets subservience and venality,
suffocates the germ of virtue,
and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.
- Thomas Jefferson
Liberty is to the collective body,
what health is to every individual body.
Without health no pleasure can be tasted by man;
without liberty, no happiness can be enjoyed by society.
- 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
An enemy generally says and believes what he wishes.
- Thomas Jefferson
Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life
in which chance has placed us,
but is always the result of a good conscience,
good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits.
- Thomas Jefferson
My reading of history convinces me that most bad government
results from too much government.
- Thomas Jefferson
The earth belongs to the living, not to the dead.
- Thomas Jefferson
Taste cannot be controlled by law.
- Thomas Jefferson
A Bill of Rights is what the people are
entitled to against every government,
and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.
- 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
To penetrate and dissipate these clouds of darkness,
the general mind must be strengthened by education.
- Thomas Jefferson
No government ought to be without censors;
and where the press is free no one ever will.
- Thomas Jefferson
An injured friend is the bitterest of foes.
- 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
Every citizen should be a soldier.
This was the case with the Greeks and Romans,
and must be that of every free state.
- Thomas Jefferson
The spirit of resistance to government
is so valuable on certain occasions
that I wish it to be always kept alive.
- Thomas Jefferson
No duty the Executive had to perform was so trying
as to put the right man in the right place.
- Thomas Jefferson
Never spend your money before you have earned it.
- 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
I have no fear that the result of our experiment
will be that men may be trusted to
govern themselves without a master.
- Thomas Jefferson
I believe that every human mind feels pleasure
in doing good to another.
- 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
How much pain they have cost us,
the evils which have never happened.
- Thomas Jefferson
Every generation needs a new revolution.
- Thomas Jefferson
Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on
does not constitute so strong an attachment
as that from which they draw their gains.
- Thomas Jefferson
That government is the strongest
of which every man feels himself a part.
- Thomas Jefferson
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny;
when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
- Thomas Jefferson
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May the world be kind to you,
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- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
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