Thomas Jefferson Quotes

Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies.

Determine never to be idle...It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing.

Do not bite the bait of pleasure till you know there is no hook beneath it.

Enlighten the people, generally and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like spirits at the dawn of day.

Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state.

Honesty is the first chapter of book of wisdom.

I cannot live without books.

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

I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.

In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.

Never fear the want of business. A man who qualifies himself well for his calling, never fails of employment.

Never spend your money before you have it.

Never trouble another for what you can do for yourself.

No instance exists of a person's writing two languages perfectly. That will always appear to be his native language which was most familiar to him in his youth.

Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.

Say nothing of my religion. It is known to God and myself alone. Its evidence before the world is to be sought in my life: if it has been honest and dutiful to society the religion which has regulated it cannot be a bad one.

Shake of all the feats of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.

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

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to always to be kept alive.

Walking is the best possible exercise. Habituate yourself to walk very far.

We confide in our strength, without boasting of it; we respect that of others, with out fearing it.

I have the consolation of having added nothing to my private fortune during my public service, and of retiring with hands clean as they are empty.

No government ought to be without censors & where the press is free, no one every will.

Health is worth more than learning.

If our house be on fire, without inquiring whether it was fired from within or without, we must try to extinguish it.

An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens.

Advertisements...contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.

I read no newspaper now but Ritchie's and in that chiefly the advertisements, for they contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.

Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched.

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.