Thomas Jefferson Printable Quotes

www.studenthandouts.com ↣ Social Studies ↣ U.S. Presidents ↣ Thomas Jefferson ↣ Thomas Jefferson Quotes

Thomas Jefferson was born in 1743 and died in 1826. In 1776, Thomas Jefferson was the primary composer of the Declaration of Independence sent by the Thirteen Colonies to England's George III. Jefferson was the first Secretary of State, serving under George Washington from 1790 until 1793. From 1797 until 1801, Jefferson was vice president under John Adams. Jefferson was the third president of the United States of America, serving two terms, from 1801 until 1809.

	Thomas Jefferson Quote on Tyranny		Thomas Jefferson Quote on Debt		Thomas Jefferson Quote on Changing the Law		Thomas Jefferson Quote on Spending Money		Thomas Jefferson Quote from the Declaration of Independence

	Thomas Jefferson Quote on the People's Will

I abhor war and view it as the greatest scourge of mankind.

Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.

An injured friend is the bitterest of foes.

It takes time to persuade men to do even what is for their own good.

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

It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.

Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.

When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty.

No man will ever carry out of the Presidency the reputation which carried him into it.

I believe that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another.

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

Nothing is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man.

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

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

Bodily decay is gloomy in prospect, but of all human contemplations the most abhorrent is body without mind.

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

It is always better to have no ideas than false ones; to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong.

Be polite to all, but intimate with few.

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

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

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.

I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.

The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it.

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.

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.

All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.

I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be.

I find that he is happiest of whom the world says least, good or bad.

The spirit of this country is totally adverse to a large military force.

We never repent of having eaten too little.

Truth is certainly a branch of morality and a very important one to society.

Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.

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

Power is not alluring to pure minds.

I cannot live without books.

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

He who knows best knows how little he knows.

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

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave.

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

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

Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government.

Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.

I have no ambition to govern men; it is a painful and thankless office.

Speeches that are measured by the hour will die with the hour.

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

The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.

One man with courage is a majority.

I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others.

Money, not morality, is the principal commerce of civilized nations.

The way to silence religious disputes is to take no notice of them.

A strong body makes the mind strong.

Taste cannot be controlled by law.

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

A coward is much more exposed to quarrels than a man of spirit.

That government is the strongest of which every man feels himself a part.

The earth belongs to the living, not to the dead.

Force is the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism.

In every country in every age, the priest has been hostile to Liberty.

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

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 blind-folded fear.

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.

I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.

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

Delay is preferable to error.

In truth, politeness is artificial good humor, it covers the natural want of it, and ends by rendering habitual a substitute nearly equivalent to the real virtue.

A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.

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.

To penetrate and dissipate these clouds of darkness, the general mind must be strengthened by education.

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

I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led, and bearding every authority which stood in their way.

The moment a person forms a theory, his imagination sees in every object only the traits which favor that theory.

The glow of one warm thought is to me worth more than money.

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

Always take hold of things by the smooth handle.

When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on.

Whenever you do a thing, act as if all the world were watching.

It is neither wealth nor splendor; but tranquility and occupation which give you happiness.

It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.

To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.

	UNIT I:		Early America	UNIT IX:	Discontent and Reform
	UNIT II:		Colonial Period	UNIT X:	War, Prosperity, and Depression
	UNIT III:		American Revolution	UNIT XI:	New Deal and World War II
	UNIT IV:		New National Government	UNIT XII:	Postwar America
	UNIT V:		Westward Expansion	UNIT XIII:	Decades of Change
	UNIT VI:		Sectional Conflict	UNIT XIV:	New Conservatism
	UNIT VII:		Civil War and Reconstruction	UNIT XV:	Into the Twenty-first Century
	UNIT VIII:		Growth and Transformation	UNIT XVI:	Polarization and Deglobalization

www.studenthandouts.com ↣ Social Studies ↣ U.S. Presidents ↣ Thomas Jefferson ↣ Thomas Jefferson Quotes