Top 500 Thomas Jefferson Quotes (2026 Update)
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251. “Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error.”

— Thomas Jefferson

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

— Thomas Jefferson

253. “Whether I retire to bed early or late, I rise with the sun.”

— Thomas Jefferson

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

— Thomas Jefferson

255. “An injured friend is the bitterest of foes.”

— Thomas Jefferson

256. “I extremely believe in luck, and I discovered more hard work, your luck as much.”

— Thomas Jefferson

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

— Thomas Jefferson

258. “I am increasingly persuaded that the earth belongs exclusively to the living and that one generation has no more right to bind another to it’s laws and judgments than one independent nation has the right to command another.”

— Thomas Jefferson

259. “I steer my bark with hope in the head, leaving fear astern. My hopes indeed sometimes fail, but not oftener than the forebodings of the gloomy.”

— Thomas Jefferson

260. “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

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

— Thomas Jefferson

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

— Thomas Jefferson

263. “All should be laid open to you without reserve, for there is not a truth existing which I fear, or would wish unknown to the whole world.”

— Thomas Jefferson

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

— Thomas Jefferson

265. “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.”

— Thomas Jefferson

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266. “Our attachment to no nation on earth should supplant our attachment to liberty.”

— Thomas Jefferson

267. “We prefer war in all cases to tribute under any form and to any people whatever.”

— Thomas Jefferson

268. “The press is the best instrument for enlightening the mind of man, and improving him as a rational, moral and social being.”

— Thomas Jefferson

269. “There is not one redeeming feature in our superstition of Christianity. It has made one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites.”

— Thomas Jefferson

270. “We are the friends of liberty everywhere, but the guarrantors of only our own.”

— Thomas Jefferson

271. “It is not by the consolidation or concentration of powers but by their distribution that good government is effected.”

— Thomas Jefferson

272. “Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains.”

— Thomas Jefferson

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273. “State a moral case to a plowman and a professor. The former will decide it as well, and often better than the latter, because he has not been led astray by artificial rules.”

— Thomas Jefferson

274. “I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature.”

— Thomas Jefferson

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

— Thomas Jefferson

276. “The chief purpose of government is to protect life. Abandon that and you have abandoned all.”

— Thomas Jefferson

277. “One never really knows how much one has been touched by a place until one has left it.”

— Thomas Jefferson

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

— Thomas Jefferson

279. “The tax which will be paid for the purpose of education is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests and nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance.”

— Thomas Jefferson

280. “If I could not go to Heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all.”

— Thomas Jefferson

281. “But though an old man, I am but a young gardener.”

— Thomas Jefferson

282. “No nation is drunken where wine is cheap, and none sober where the dearness of wine substitutes ardent spirits as the common beverage.”

— Thomas Jefferson

283. “Every gentleman plays billiards, but someone who plays billiards too well, is no gentleman.”

— Thomas Jefferson

284. “Truth between candid minds can never do harm.”

— Thomas Jefferson

285. “The mobs of great cities add just so much to the support of pure government as sores do to the strength of the human body.”

— Thomas Jefferson

286. “A good cause is often injured more by ill-timed efforts of its friends than by the arguments of its enemies. Persuasion, perseverance and patience are the best advocates on questions depending on the will of others.”

— Thomas Jefferson

287. “Free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence; it is jealousy, and not confidence, which prescribes limited constitutions, to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power.”

— Thomas Jefferson

288. “Never did a prisoner, released from his chains, feel such relief as I shall on shaking off the shackles of power.”

— Thomas Jefferson

289. “Let those flatter who fear; it is not an American art .”

— Thomas Jefferson

290. “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

291. “Material abundance without character is the surest way to destruction.”

— Thomas Jefferson

292. “The tender breasts of ladies were not formed for political convulsion.”

— Thomas Jefferson

293. “Confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism. Free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence.”

— Thomas Jefferson

294. “I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind.”

— Thomas Jefferson

295. “The spirit of 1776 is not dead. It had only been slumbering. The body of the American people is substantially republican.”

— Thomas Jefferson

296. “In every government on earth is some trace of human weakness, some germ of corruption and degeneracy, which cunning will discover, and wickedness insensibly open, cultivate and improve.”

— Thomas Jefferson

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

— Thomas Jefferson

298. “I have great confidence in the common sense of mankind in general.”

— Thomas Jefferson

299. “Tranquility is the old man’s milk.”

— Thomas Jefferson

300. “I consider ethics, as well as religion, as supplements to law in the government of man.”

— Thomas Jefferson