Thomas Jefferson Quotes - Page 12

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No society can make a perpetual constitution... The earth belongs always to the living generation.

The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.

Honesty and interest are as intimately connected in the public as in the private code of morality.

The appointment of a woman to office is an innovation for which the public is not prepared, nor I.

We see the wisdom of Solon's remark, that no more good must be attempted than the nation can bear.

A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both, and deserve neither.

I believe in good luck, and the harder I work and the more I believe in myself, the luckier I get.

Sensibility of mind is indeed the parent of every virtue, but it is the parent of much misery, too.

The interests of a nation, when well understood, will be found to coincide with their moral duties.

Government can do something for the people only in proportion as it can do something to the people.

The good opinion of mankind, like the lever of Archimedes, with the given fulcrum, moves the world.

The order of nature [is] that individual happiness shall be inseparable from the practice of virtue.

My principle is to do whatever is right, and leave consequences to him who has the disposal of them.

The greatest calamity which could befall us would be submission to a government of unlimited powers.

We do not mean to count or weigh our contributions by any standard other than that of our abilities.

He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.

If you have any duty which must be done, and it seems disagreeable, do it promptly and have it over.

Let us in education dream of an aristocracy of achievement arising out of a democracy of opportunity

The day is not distant when we must bear and adopt [the abolition of slavery], or worse will follow.

I believe the states can best govern our home concerns, and the general government our foreign ones.

We must use a good deal of economy in our wood, never cutting down new, where we can make the old do.

As our enemies have found we can reason like men, so now let us show them we can fight like men also.

Ambition is a tricky little animal to tame. It is very skillful at concealing itself from its master.

Common sense is the foundation of all authorities, of the laws themselves, and of their construction.

[F]alsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions.

When two parties make a compact, there results to each a power of compelling the other to execute it.

No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever.

Circumstances sometimes require, that rights the most unquestionable should be advanced with delicacy.

Peace with all nations, and the right which that gives us with respect to all nations, are our object.

I could say much about politics, our only entertainment here, but you would not care a fig about that.

I see no comfort in outliving one's friends, and remaining a mere monument of the times which are past.

Experience has taught me that manufacturers are now as necessary to our independence as to our comfort.

History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government.

When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe.

I have overlived the generation with which mutual labors & perils begat mutual confidence and influence.

The Declaration of Independence . . . [is the] declaratory charter of our rights, and the rights of man.

Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy, and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it.

Experience has already shown that the impeachment the Constitution has provided is not even a scarecrow.

It is always better to have no ideas than false ones; to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong.

Erecting the 'wall of separation between church and state'... is absolutely essential in a free society.

The happiest moments of my life have been the few which I have passed at home in the bosom of my family.

To penetrate and dissipate these clouds of darkness, the general mind must be strengthened by education.

I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it.

I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

I have sworn upon the altar of God Eternal, hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

To the corruptions of Christianity I am indeed opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself.

The present generation has the same right of self-government which the past one has exercised for itself.

The most sacred of the duties of a government [is] to do equal and impartial justice to all its citizens.

The unsuccessful strugglers against tyranny have been the chief martyrs of treason laws in all countries.

I can scarcely contemplate a more incalculable evil than the breaking of the Union into two or more parts.

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