Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

Quotes

• The Price Of Freedom Is Eternal Vigilance.

• We never regret having eaten too little.

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

• Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations -- entangling alliances with none.

• War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses.

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

• The flames kindled on the Fourth of July, 1776, have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism; on the contrary, they will consume these engines and all who work them.

• Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy, and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it.

• The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to.

• The government is best which governs least.

• The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

• I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature.

• The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

• I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.

• I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.

• Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none.

• When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, a hundred.

• ...a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.

• The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all.

• 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.