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Thomas Jefferson Quotes

1743–1826 United States

Thomas Jefferson (13 April 1743 – 4 July 1826) was author of the Declaration of Independence (1776) and the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (1777), founder of the University of Virginia (1819), the third president of the United States (1801–1809), a political philosopher, editor of Jefferson's Bible (1819), and one of the most influential founders of the United States.

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Also known as: Jefferson, Jefferson, Thomas, Thomas jefferson, Jeffersonian

Random Thomas Jefferson quote

349 quotes

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

I doubt whether the people of this country would suffer an execution for heresy, or a three years imprisonment for not comprehending the mysteries of the trinity.

But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life; and thanks to a benevolent arrangement of things, the greater part of life is sunshine.

Amplification is the vice of modern oratory. It is an insult to an assembly of reasonable men, disgusting and revolting instead of persuading. Speeches measured by the hour, die with the hour.

His parentage was obscure; his condition poor; his education null; his natural endowments great; his life correct and innocent: he was meek, benevolent, patient, firm, disinterested, & of the sublimest eloquence.

No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free no one ever will.

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground.

It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul.

I agree ... that a professorship of Theology should have no place in our institution. But we cannot always do what is absolutely best.

In questions of power, then, let no more be said of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.

There is no act, however virtuous, for which ingenuity may not find some bad motive.

Politics, like religion, hold up the torches of martyrdom to the reformers of error.

What all agree upon is probably right; what no two agree in most probably is wrong.

A free people [claim] their rights, as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.

A Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774)

Independence can be trusted nowhere but with the people in mass. They are inherently independent of all but moral law.

We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed.

I believe the Indian then to be in body and mind equal to the white man.

Letter to the Marquis de Chastellux (1785)

Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto.

The equal rights of man, and the happiness of every individual, are now acknowledged to be the only legitimate objects of government.

Letter to A. Coray (1823)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Thomas Jefferson (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.