Top 500 Thomas Jefferson Quotes (2026 Update)
Page 8 of 10

351. “It is not only vain, but wicked, in a legislator to frame laws in opposition to the laws of nature, and to arm them with the terrors of death. This is truly creating crimes in order to punish them.”

— Thomas Jefferson

352. “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

Featured in: Reading Quotes

353. “Truth and reason are eternal. They have prevailed. And they will eternally prevail; however, in times and places they may be overborne for a while by violence, military, civil, or ecclesiastical.”

— Thomas Jefferson

354. “An acre of the best ground for hemp, is to be selected and sewn in hemp and be kept for a permanent hemp patch.”

— Thomas Jefferson

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

— Thomas Jefferson

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

— Thomas Jefferson

357. “The press is impotent when it abandons itself to falsehood.”

— Thomas Jefferson

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

— Thomas Jefferson

359. “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

Featured in: Country Quotes

360. “Botany I rank with the most valuable sciences.”

— Thomas Jefferson

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

— Thomas Jefferson

362. “Nothing can be believed but what one sees, or has from an eye witness.”

— Thomas Jefferson

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

— Thomas Jefferson

364. “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

Featured in: Country Quotes

365. “I concur with you strictly in your opinion of the comparative merits of atheism and demonism, and really see nothing but the latter in the being worshipped by many who think themselves Christians.”

— Thomas Jefferson

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

— Thomas Jefferson

367. “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

Featured in: Reading Quotes

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

— Thomas Jefferson

369. “Every human being must be viewed according to what it is good for. For not one of us, no, not one, is perfect. And were we to love none who had imperfection, this world would be a desert for our love.”

— Thomas Jefferson

370. “To consider judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions is a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy.”

— Thomas Jefferson

371. “Every man has a commission to admonish, exhort, convince another of error.”

— Thomas Jefferson

372. “I feel much alarmed at the prospect of seeing General Jackson President. He is the most unfit man I know for such a place.”

— Thomas Jefferson

373. “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

374. “If virtuous, the government need not fear the fair operation of attack and defense. Nature has given to man no other means of sifting the truth, either in religion, law, or politics.”

— Thomas Jefferson

375. “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

376. “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

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

— Thomas Jefferson

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

— Thomas Jefferson

379. “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

380. “I never before knew the full value of trees. Under them I breakfast, dine, write, read and receive my company.”

— Thomas Jefferson

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

— Thomas Jefferson

382. “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

Featured in: Country Quotes

383. “We generally learn languages for the benefit of reading the books written in them.”

— Thomas Jefferson

Featured in: Book Quotes, Reading Quotes

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

— Thomas Jefferson

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

— Thomas Jefferson

386. “Everyone has a natural right to choose that vocation in life which he thinks most likely gives him comfortable subsistence.”

— Thomas Jefferson

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

— Thomas Jefferson

388. “I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master.”

— Thomas Jefferson

389. “It’s only merit was in being the first publication which carried the claim of our rights their whole length, and asserted that there was no rightful link of connection between us and England but that of being under the same king.”

— Thomas Jefferson

390. “Our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them.”

— Thomas Jefferson

391. “What is true of every member of the society, individually, is true of them all collectively; since the rights of the whole can be no more than the sum of the rights of the individuals.”

— Thomas Jefferson

392. “An elective despotism was not the government we fought for.”

— Thomas Jefferson

393. “History has informed us that bodies of men as well as individuals are susceptible of the spirit of tyranny.”

— Thomas Jefferson

394. “Our judges are as honest as other men and not more so. They have, with others, the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps.”

— Thomas Jefferson

395. “The ground of liberty is to be gained by inches, and we must be contented to secure what we can get from time to time and eternally press forward for what is yet to get. It takes time to persuade men to do even what is for their own good.”

— Thomas Jefferson

396. “The time to guard against corruption and tyranny is before they shall have gotten hold of us. It is better to keep the wolf out of the fold, than to trust to drawing his teeth and talons after he shall have entered.”

— Thomas Jefferson

397. “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

398. “Were we directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we should soon want bread.”

— Thomas Jefferson

399. “The mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.”

— Thomas Jefferson

400. “Never buy what you do not want, because it is cheap; it will be dear to you.”

— Thomas Jefferson