“The constitutions of most of our States assert that all power is inherent in the people that… it is their right and duty to be at all times armed.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“Power is not alluring to pure minds.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“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.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“Politics is such a torment that I advise everyone I love not to mix with it.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“I have no ambition to govern men it is a painful and thankless office.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations entangling alliances with none.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“Peace and abstinence from European interferences are our objects, and so will continue while the present order of things in America remain uninterrupted.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy, and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be your constant companion of your walks.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“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.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“Do you want to know who you are? Don’t ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“Never spend your money before you have earned it.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“Money, not morality, is the principle commerce of civilized nations.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“The glow of one warm thought is to me worth more than money.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“It takes time to persuade men to do even what is for their own good.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“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.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“I have no ambition to govern men it is a painful and thankless office.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“As our enemies have found we can reason like men, so now let us show them we can fight like men also.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“An association of men who will not quarrel with one another is a thing which has never yet existed, from the greatest confederacy of nations down to a town meeting or a vestry.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“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, and this is necessary to close the circlue of our felicities.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“Politics is such a torment that I advise everyone I love not to mix with it.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“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.”
– Thomas Jefferson