Top 10 Quotes by Thomas Jefferson

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With all the defects in our Constitution, whether general or particular, the comparison of our government with those of Europe, is like a comparison of Heaven with Hell. England, like the earth, may be allowed to take the intermediate station.

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

If your letters are as long as the bible, they will appear short to me. Only let them be brim full of affection.

Truth is certainly a branch of morality and a very important one to society.

If you have to eat crow, eat it while it's young and tender.

Taxes should be continued by annual or biennial reeactments, because a constant hold, by the nation, of the strings of the public purse is a salutary restraint from which an honest government ought not wish, nor a corrupt one to be permitted, to be free.

Men possessing minds of the first order and who have had opportunities of being known and of acquiring the general confidence do not abound in any country beyond the wants of the country.

There is no habit you will value so much as that of walking far without fatigue.

I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past. 1

I feel... an ardent desire to see knowledge so disseminated through the mass of mankind that it may, at length, reach even the extremes of society: beggars and kings.

In a virtuous government, and more especially in times like these, public offices are what they should be - burdens to those appointed to them which it would be wrong to decline, though foreseen to bring them intense labor and great private loss.

In defense of our persons and properties under actual violation, we took up arms. When that violence shall be removed, when hostilities shall cease on the part of the aggressors, hostilities shall cease on our part also.

Too old to plant trees for my own gratification, I shall do it for my posterity.

The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty and property of their constituents.

The elective franchise, if guarded as the ark of our safety, will peaceably dissipate all combinations to subvert a Constitution, dictated by the wisdom, and resting on the will of the people.

Resisting tyranny is obeying God

For if one link in nature's chain might be lost, another might be lost, until the whole of things will vanish by piecemeal.

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

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

I wish to see this beverage become common instead of the whiskey which kills sone-third of our citizens and ruins their families.

Books may be classed from the Faculties of the mind

Paul was the first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus.

I am a Christian in the only sense in which He wished anyone to be: sincerely attached to His doctrines in preference to all others.

I think myself that we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious. 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 dec

Religion is a subject on which I have ever been most scrupulously reserved. I have considered it as a matter between every man and his Maker, in which no other, and far less the public, had a right to intermeddle.

The provisions we have made [for our government] are such as please ourselves; they answer the substantial purposes of government and of justice, and other purposes than these should not be answered.

[An] act of the Congress of the United States... which assumes powers... not delegated by the Constitution, is not law, but is altogether void and of no force.

Of all the systems of morality, ancient or modern which have come under my observation, none appears to me so pure as that of Jesus....I am a real Christian, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus.

I love to see honest and honorable men at the helm, men who will not bend their politics to their purses, nor pursue measures by which they may profit, and then profit by their measures.

He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it the second time.

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