Thomas Jefferson Quotes
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501. “No stile of writing is so delightful as that which is all pith, which never omits a necessary word, nor uses an unnecessary one.”

— Thomas Jefferson

502. “Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error.”

— Thomas Jefferson

503. “The only way to win money out of a casino is to own one.”

— Thomas Jefferson

504. “It is an axiom in my mind, that our liberty can never be safe but in the hands of the people themselves, and that too of the people with a certain degree of instruction. This it is the business of the State to effect, and on a general plan.”

— Thomas Jefferson

505. “My heart trembles when I reflect that God is just.”

— Thomas Jefferson

506. “Man once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind. With such persons, gullibility, which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason, and the mind becomes a wreck.”

— Thomas Jefferson

507. “Do not write me studied letters but ramble as you please.”

— Thomas Jefferson

508. “I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens who, reading newspapers, live and die in the belief that they have known something of what has been passing in their times.”

— Thomas Jefferson

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509. “Dependence leads to subservience.”

— Thomas Jefferson

510. “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.”

— Thomas Jefferson

511. “I recoil with horror at the ferociousness of man. Will nations never devise a more rational umpire of differences than force? Are there no means of coercing injustice more gratifying to our nature than a waste of the blood of thousands and of the labor of millions of our fellow creatures?”

— Thomas Jefferson

512. “History, in general, only informs us what bad government is.”

— Thomas Jefferson

513. “The Habeas Corpus secures every man here, alien or citizen, against everything which is not law, whatever shape it may assume.”

— Thomas Jefferson

514. “Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous and they are tied to their country and wedded to its liberty and interests by the most lasting bands.”

— Thomas Jefferson

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515. “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

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

— Thomas Jefferson

517. “Politics is such a torment that I advise everyone I love not to mix with it.”

— Thomas Jefferson

518. “No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of the garden.”

— Thomas Jefferson

519. “A single zealot may commence prosecutor, and better men be his victims.”

— Thomas Jefferson

520. “Always take hold of things by the smooth handle.”

— Thomas Jefferson

521. “Against us are all timid men who prefer the calm of despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty We are likely to preserve the liberty we have obtained only by unremitting labors and perils.”

— Thomas Jefferson

522. “Educate and inform the whole mass of the people.”

— Thomas Jefferson

523. “It is the old practice of despots to use a part of the people to keep the rest in order.”

— Thomas Jefferson

524. “Health, learning and virtue will ensure your happiness; they will give you a quiet conscience, private esteem and public honour.”

— Thomas Jefferson

525. “The moment a person forms a theory, his imagination sees in every object only the traits which favor that theory.”

— Thomas Jefferson

526. “Taxes should be proportioned to what may be annually spared by the individual.”

— Thomas Jefferson

527. “A rising nation, spread over a wide and fruitful Land, traversing all the seas with the rich production of their Industry.”

— Thomas Jefferson

528. “I like my coffee like I like my women.”

— Thomas Jefferson

529. “Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper.”

— Thomas Jefferson

530. “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 rights of the individual.”

— Thomas Jefferson

531. “Reading, reflection and time have convinced me that the interests of society require the observation of those moral precepts only in which all religions agree.”

— Thomas Jefferson

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532. “A little rebellion is a good thing.”

— Thomas Jefferson

533. “There is a fulness of time when men should go, and not occupy too long the ground to which others have a right to advance.”

— Thomas Jefferson

534. “Errors of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.”

— Thomas Jefferson

535. “Each generation has a right to choose for itself the form of government it believes most promotive of its happiness.”

— Thomas Jefferson

536. “Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions any more than our opinions in physics or geometry...”

— Thomas Jefferson

537. “I have but one system of ethics for men and for nations – to be grateful, to be faithful to all engagements under all circumstances, to be open and generous, promoting in the long run even the interests of both.”

— Thomas Jefferson

538. “The abolition of domestic slavery is the great object of desire in those colonies, where it was unhappily introduced in their infant state.”

— Thomas Jefferson

539. “A great deal of love given to a few is better than a little to many.”

— Thomas Jefferson

540. “Experience demands 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

541. “One war, such as that of our Revolution, is enough for one life.”

— Thomas Jefferson

542. “Resort is had to ridicule only when reason is against us.”

— Thomas Jefferson

543. “Though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be rightful, must be reasonable.”

— Thomas Jefferson

544. “I consider the doctrines of Jesus as delivered by himself to contain the outlines of the sublimest system of morality that has ever been taught but I hold in the most profound detestation and execration the corruptions of it which have been invented...”

— Thomas Jefferson

545. “If you are obliged to neglect any thing, let it be your chemistry. It is the least useful and the least amusing to a country gentleman of all the ordinary branches of science.”

— Thomas Jefferson

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546. “With nations as with individuals our interests soundly calculated will ever be found inseparable from our moral duties.”

— Thomas Jefferson

547. “There are two subjects, indeed, which I shall claim a right to further as long as I breathe: the public education, and the sub-division of counties into wards. I consider the continuance of republican government as absolutely hanging on these two hooks.”

— Thomas Jefferson

548. “It is reasonable that everyone who asks justice should do justice.”

— Thomas Jefferson

549. “The failure of one thing is repaired by the success of another.”

— Thomas Jefferson

550. “If I could not go to heaven with but a party, I would not go there at all. Therefore, I am not of the party of federalists. But I am much further from that of the anti-federalists.”

— Thomas Jefferson