Thomas Jefferson quotes page 1

1743-1826, American Founding Father, 3rd President of the United States and
author of the Declaration of Independence

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.
Thomas Jefferson

When angry count to ten before you speak. If very angry, count to one hundred.
Thomas Jefferson

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

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

Be polite to all, but intimate with few.
Thomas Jefferson

A government afraid of its citizens is a democracy. Citizens afraid of government is tyranny.
Thomas Jefferson

When a man assumes a public trust he should consider himself a public property.
Thomas Jefferson

Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.
Thomas Jefferson

I had rather be shut up in a very modest cottage, with my books, my family, and a few old
friends, dining on simple bacon, and letting the world roll on as it liked, than to occupy the
most splendid post which any human power can give.
Thomas Jefferson

On matters of style, swim with the current; on matters of principle, stand like a rock.
Thomas Jefferson

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

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

Honesty is the first chapter of the book wisdom.
Thomas Jefferson

An injured friend is the bitterest of foes.
Thomas Jefferson

Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies.
Thomas Jefferson

The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.
Thomas Jefferson

The liberty of speaking and writing guards our other liberties.
Thomas Jefferson

It is a part of the American character to consider nothing as desperate.
Thomas Jefferson

Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on
earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.
Thomas Jefferson

Paper is poverty... it is only the ghost of money, and not money itself.
Thomas Jefferson

It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are 20 gods, or no god. It neither picks my
pocket nor breaks my leg.
Thomas Jefferson

I know 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 a 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.
Thomas Jefferson

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

We are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as
reason is left free to combat it.
Thomas Jefferson

Man is an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all education in him. From his cradle to
his grave he is learning to do what he sees others do.
Thomas Jefferson

The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last
resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.
Thomas Jefferson

One travels more usefully when alone, because he reflects more.
Thomas Jefferson

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

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

If you want something you've never had, you must be willing to do something you've never
done.
Thomas Jefferson

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