Thomas Jefferson Quotes

“I cannot live without books.”

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

“I predict future happiness for Americans, if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”

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

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

“If you want something you've never had, you must be willing to do something you've never done.”

“I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.”

“To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.”

“Good wine is a necessity of life for me.”

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

“The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.”

“One man with courage is a majority.”

“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.”

“What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man! Who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment or death itself in vindication of his own liberty, and the next moment be deaf to all those motives whose power supported him thro' his trial, and inflict on his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose.”

“Every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans: we are all Federalists.”

“This momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union.”

“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?”

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it's natural manure.”

“Laws and constitutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times.”

“Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.”

“There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents. … The natural aristocracy I consider as the most precious gift of nature for the instruction, the trusts, and government of society.”