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.
Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of Liberty.
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.
The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
There is nothing more unequal than the equal treatment of unequal people.
All should be laid open to you without reserve, for there is not a truth existing which I fear, or would wish unknown to the whole world.
I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led.
It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.
And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.
The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.
Do you want to know who you are? Don’t ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.
I am for freedom of religion, and against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendency of one sect over another.
I am satisfied, and sufficiently occupied with the things which are, without tormenting or troubling myself about those which may indeed be, but of which I have no evidence.
I may grow rich by an art I am compelled to follow I may recover health by medicines I am compelled to take against my own judgment but I cannot be saved by a worship I disbelieve and abhor.
They (religions) dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subversions of the duperies on which they live.
Neither Pagan nor Mahamedan nor Jew ought to be excluded from the civil rights of the Commonwealth because of his religion. -quoting John Locke’s argument.
A nation which expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, expects that which never was and never will be.
The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.
If it is believed that these elementary schools will be better managed by the governor and council or any other general authority of the government, than by the parents within each ward, it is a belief against all experience.
Determine never to be idle. It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing.
Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions any more than our opinions in physics or geometry…
While the art of printing is left to us science can never be retrograde what is once acquired of real knowledge can never be lost.
The more ignorant we become the less value we set on science, and the less inclination we shall have to seek it.
Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations…entangling alliances with none
I find friendship to be like wine, raw when new, ripened with age, the true old man’s milk and restorative cordial.
Whatever enables us to go to war, secures our peace
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.
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.
How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy!
Those who expect to be both ignorant and free, expect what never was and never will be.
We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed.
Our civil rights have no dependence upon our religious opinions more than our opinions in physics or geometry.
He [Weishaupt] says, no one ever laid a surer foundation for liberty than our grand master, Jesus of Nazareth.
I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.
We in America do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate.
I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.
I am increasingly persuaded that the earth belongs exclusively to the living and that one generation has no more right to bind another to it’s laws and judgments than one independent nation has the right to command another.
I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.
…We are all Federalists,and we are all Republicans.
Politics, like religion, hold up the torches of martyrdom to the reformers of error.
The care of human life and happiness, and their destruction is the first and only legitimate object of a good government.
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.
History, in general, only informs us what bad government is.
Let us save what remains: not by vaults and locks which fence them from the public eye and use in consigning them to the waste of time, but by such a multiplication of copies, as shall place them beyond the reach of accident.
Even in Europe a change has sensibly taken place in the mind of man. Science has liberated the ideas of those who read and reflect, and the American example has kindled feelings of right in the people.
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
All that is necessary for a student is access to a library.
This institution will be based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind. For here 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.
I find that the harder I work , the more luck I seem to have.
I think one travels more usefully when they travel alone, because they reflect
I haven’t failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that don’t work.
A Man’s management of his own purse speaks volumes about character
The contest is not between Us and Them, but between Good and Evil, and if those who would fight Evil adopt the ways of Evil, Evil wins.
Experience declares that man is the only animal which devours his own kind; for I can apply no milder term to the governments of Europe, and to the general prey of the rich on the poor.
When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, an hundred.
Everything is useful which contributes to fix in the principles and practices of virtue.
Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and Father of the University of Vir
The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest.
The greatest service which can be rendered any country is to add a useful plant to its culture.–The Fruit Hunters
The equal rights of man, and the happiness of every individual, are now acknowledged to be the only legitimate objects of government.
If once the people become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors, shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions.
The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground.
I hope that we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.
To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.
Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto.
It is reasonable that everyone who asks justice should do justice
I hope we shall … crush in it’s birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and to bid defiance to the laws of their country.
The opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction.
That liberty [is pure] which is to go to all, and not to the few or the rich alone. (to Horatio Gates, 1798)
Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.
Question with boldness even the existence of aGod; because, if there be one, he must more approve ofthe homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.
It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.
In questions of power, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the constitution.
Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion.
Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitudefrom achieving his goal.Nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong attitude.
Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst, and cold.
In a republican nation, whose citizens are to be led by reason and persuasion and not by force, the art of reasoning becomes of first importance
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.
Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error.
I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty, than those attending too small a degree of it.
The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to.
The Tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrant. It is its natural manure.
Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state.
No man will ever bring out of that office the reputation which carries him into it. The honeymoon would be as short in that case as in any other, and its moments of ecstasy would be ransomed by years of torment and hatred.
It is an axiom in my mind, that our liberty can never be safe but in the hands of the people themselves, and that too of the people with a certain degree of instruction. This it is the business of the State to effect, and on a general plan.
A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.
We have the wolf by the ears; and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.
So inscrutable is the arrangement of causes and consequences in this world, that a two-penny duty on tea, unjustly imposed in a sequestered part of it, changes the condition of all its inhabitants.
Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions.
Nothing was or is farther from my intentions, than to enlist myself as the champion of a fixed opinion, where I have only expressed doubt.
All are dead, and ourselves left alone amidst a new generation whom we know not, and who know us not.
I consider him [Alexander von Humboldt] the most important scientist whom I have met.
I’m a greater believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it
Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous, and they are tied to their country and wedded to its liberty and interests by the most lasting bonds.
But every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle.
Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle.
If there is one principle more deeply rooted in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest.
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.
Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.
Do not bite at the bait of pleasure till you know there is no hook beneath it.
New York, like London, seems to be a cloacina [toilet] of all the depravities of human nature.
An enemy generally says and believes what he wishes.
When describing the University of Virginia: Here, 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.
When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.
He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it the second time.
Enlighten the people, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.
Advertisements contain the only truth to be relied on in a newspaper.
Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies.
No knowledge can be more satisfactory to a man than that of his own frame its parts their functions and actions.
No government ought to be without censors and where the press is free no one ever will.
I am mortified to be told that in the United States of America the sale of a book can become a subject of inquiry and of criminal inquiry too.
In questions of power let no more be heard of confidence in man but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the constitution.
Honesty is the first chapter of the book of wisdom.
I am for freedom of religion and against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another.
It is the old practice of despots to use a part of the people to keep the rest in order.
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal that they are endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights that among these are life liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
The happiest moments of my life have been the few which I have passed at home in the bosom of my family.
The happiest moments of my life have been the few which I have passed at home in the bosom of my family.
Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God if He ever had a chosen people whose breasts He has made His peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue.
Happiness is not being pained in body or troubled in mind.
That government is best which governs the least because its people discipline themselves.
I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.
The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government and to protect its free expression should be our first object.
Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed us but is always the result of a good conscience good health occupation and freedom in all just pursuits.
Happiness is not being pained in body nor troubled in mind.
It is neither wealth nor splendor but tranquility and occupation which give happiness.
It is neither wealth nor splendor but tranquility and occupation which give happiness.
I steer my bark with hope in my heart leaving fear astern.
The sword of the law should never fall but on those whose guilt is so apparent as to be pronounced by their friends as well as foes.
The small landholders are the most precious part of a state.
The execution of the laws is more important than the making of them.
The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time.
I’m a great believer in luck and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.
It is my principle that the will of the majority should always prevail.
I never did or countenanced in public life a single act inconsistent with the strictest good faith having never believed there was one code of morality for a public and another for a private man.
I do not take a single newspaper nor read one a month and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it.
Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without government I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.
If a due participation of office is a matter of right how are vacancies to be obtained? Those by death are few: by resignation none.
No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any.
It is rare that the public sentiment decides immorally or unwisely and the individual who differs from it ought to distrust and examine well his own opinion.
I steer my bark with hope in my heart leaving fear astern.
If I could not go to Heaven but with a party I would not go there at all.
The people are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.
Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on office a rottenness begins in his conduct.
If a due participation of office is a matter of right how are vacancies to be obtained? Those by death are few by resignation none.
I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others.
I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.
No man will ever bring out of the Presidency the reputation which carries him into it.
Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press and that cannot be limited without being lost.
It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.
Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.
A republican government is slow to move yet when once in motion its momentum becomes irresistible.
I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.
Resort is had to ridicule only when reason is against us.
Equal rights for all special privileges for none.
Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans and must be that of every free state.
Walking is the best possible exercise. Habituate yourself to walk very far.
Peace commerce and honest friendship with all nations – entangling alliances with none.
I’m a great believer in luck and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.
I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.
I like the dreams for the future better than the history of the past.
When a man assumes a public trust he should consider himself as public property.
The man who fears no truths has nothing to fear from lies.
War is as much a punishment to the punisher as to the sufferer.
No nation is drunken where wine is cheap and none sober where the dearness of wine substitutes ardent spirits as the common beverage. It is in truth the only antidote to the bane of whiskey.
How much pain they have cost us the evils which have never happened.
I am savage enough to prefer the woods, the wilds, and the independence of Monticello, to all the brilliant pleasures of this gay capital [Paris].
I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.
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.
I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be.
One loves to possess arms, though they hope never to have occasion for them.
The glow of one warm thought is to me worth more than money.
I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.
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.
The most successful war seldom pays for its losses.
War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses.
The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind.
In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.
There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me.
In every country and every age, the priest had been hostile to Liberty.
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.
The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.
Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed us, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits.
It is neither wealth nor splendor but tranquility and occupation which give you happiness.
Happiness is not being pained in body or troubled in mind.
Here was buried Thomas Jefferson Author of the Declaration of American Independence Of the Statute of Virginia for religious freedom & Father of the University of Virginia.
Leave all the afternoon for exercise and recreation, which are as necessary as reading. I will rather say more necessary because health is worth more than learning.
I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.
It is in our lives and not our words that our religion must be read.
Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of a Censor – over each other.
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
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.
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.
The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time.
Walking is the best possible exercise. Habituate yourself to walk very far.
For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their best security.
I believe that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another.
History, in general, only informs us of what bad government is.
Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.
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.
Leave no authority existing not responsible to the people.
I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just that his justice cannot sleep forever.
It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God.
I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.
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.
He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.
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.
There is not a truth existing which I fear… or would wish unknown to the whole world.
My only fear is that I may live too long. This would be a subject of dread to me.
Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.
Truth is certainly a branch of morality and a very important one to society.
One travels more usefully when alone, because he reflects more.
I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master.
When a man assumes a public trust he should consider himself a public property.
No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of the garden.
Wisdom I know is social. She seeks her fellows. But Beauty is jealous, and illy bears the presence of a rival.
The moment a person forms a theory, his imagination sees in every object only the traits which favor that theory.
Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct.
I have no ambition to govern men it is a painful and thankless office.
Politics is such a torment that I advise everyone I love not to mix with it.
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.
Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy, and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it.
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?
Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none.
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.
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.
No government ought to be without censors and where the press is free no one ever will.
Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.
Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.
If we can but prevent the government from wasting the labours of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy.
The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.
That government is the strongest of which every man feels himself a part.
Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.
Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government.
Money, not morality, is the principle commerce of civilized nations.
So confident am I in the intentions, as well as wisdom, of the government, that I shall always be satisfied that what is not done, either cannot, or ought not to be done.
Peace and abstinence from European interferences are our objects, and so will continue while the present order of things in America remain uninterrupted.
Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.
There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents.
When angry count to ten before you speak. If very angry, count to one hundred.
It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.
The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave.