Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson (13 April 1743 – 4 July 1826) was the third president of the United States (1801–1809), author of the Declaration of Independence (1776), a political philosopher, and one of the most influential founders of the United States.
Found 188 thoughts of Thomas Jefferson
The liberty of speaking and writing guards our other liberties.
Thomas Jefferson
It is to secure our rights that we resort to government at all.
Thomas Jefferson
The happiest moments my heart knows are those in which it is pouring forth its affections to a few esteemed characters.
Thomas Jefferson
Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
Thomas Jefferson
I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.
Thomas Jefferson
I have ever deemed it more honorable and more profitable, too, to set a good example than to follow a bad one.
Thomas Jefferson
The beauty of the second amendment is that it will not be needed until they try to take it.
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
I sincerely? believe? in the general existence of moral instinct. I think it the brightest gem with which the human character is studded, and the want of it as more degrading than the most hideous of the bodily deformities.
Thomas Jefferson
I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.
Thomas Jefferson
My theory has always been, that if we are to dream, the flatteries of hope are as cheap, and pleasanter, than the gloom of despair.
Thomas Jefferson
We confide in our strength, without boasting of it; we respect that of others, without fearing it.
Thomas Jefferson
Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind.
Thomas Jefferson
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
Thomas Jefferson
Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.
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 juries are our judges of all fact, and of law when they choose it.
Thomas Jefferson
Of liberty I would say that, in the whole plenitude of its extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will. But rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law,' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual.
Thomas Jefferson
The evidence of the natural rights of expatriation, like that of our right to life, liberty, the use of our faculties, the pursuit of happiness, is not left to the feeble and sophistical
Thomas Jefferson
Experience declares 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
Never suppose that in any possible situation or under any circumstances that it is best for you to do a dishonorable thing however slightly so it may appear to you. Encourage all your virtuous dispositions, and exercise them whenever an opportunity arises, being assured that they will gain strength by exercise...and that exercise will make them habitual.
Thomas Jefferson
I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.
Thomas Jefferson
