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 184 thoughts of Thomas Jefferson
Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have ... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases.
Thomas Jefferson
I own that I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.
Thomas Jefferson
The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object.
Thomas Jefferson
I am for freedom of religion, & against all maneuvres to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another.
Thomas Jefferson
Force is the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism.
Thomas Jefferson
All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.
Thomas Jefferson
He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.
Thomas Jefferson
It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.
Thomas Jefferson
I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.
Thomas Jefferson
To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.
Thomas Jefferson
It is always better to have no ideas than false ones; to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong.
Thomas Jefferson
The natural cause of the human mind is certainly from credulity to skepticism.
Thomas Jefferson
Do not bite at the bait of pleasure till you know there is no hook beneath it.
Thomas Jefferson
It takes time to persuade men to do even what is for their own good.
Thomas Jefferson
A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor and bread it has earned - this is the sum of good government.
Thomas Jefferson
I am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greek and Roman leave to us.
Thomas Jefferson
I find that he is happiest of whom the world says least, good or bad.
Thomas Jefferson
No duty the Executive had to perform was so trying as to put the right man in the right place.
Thomas Jefferson
It is in our lives and not our words that our religion must be read.
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
The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.
Thomas Jefferson
I am mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, the sale of a book can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too.
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
