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Thomas Jefferson Quotes


Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing.

Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of a Censor - over each other.

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

Do you want to know who you are? Don't ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.

Don't talk about what you have done or what you are going to do.

Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.

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

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

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

Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.

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.

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.

Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal 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.

For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their best security.

Force is the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism.

Friendship is but another name for an alliance with the follies and the misfortunes of others. Our own share of miseries is sufficient: why enter then as volunteers into those of another?

Happiness is not being pained in body or troubled in mind.

He who knows best knows how little he knows.

He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.

History, in general, only informs us of what bad government is.