Thomas Jefferson Quotes and Sayings

Famous Thomas Jefferson Quotes

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

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

I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.
-Thomas Jefferson

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

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

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

One man with courage is a majority.
-Thomas Jefferson

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

“I’m a greater believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it”
-Thomas Jefferson

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

Thomas Jefferson Quotes on Religion

It is in our lives and not our words that our religion must be read.
-Thomas Jefferson

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.
-Thomas Jefferson

The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time.
-Thomas Jefferson

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

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

“Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions any more than our opinions in physics or geometry…”
-Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson Quotes on Government

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

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

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

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

Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.
-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

It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.
-Thomas Jefferson

“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.”
-Thomas Jefferson

“History, in general, only informs us what bad government is.”
Thomas Jefferson, Letters of Thomas Jefferson

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.
-Thomas Jefferson

A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, 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.
-Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson Quotes on Freedom

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

Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.
-Thomas Jefferson

The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave.
-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

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

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

Thomas Jefferson Education Quotes

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

The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.
-Thomas Jefferson

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