Thomas Jefferson Quotes | GloryQuotes

Thomas Jefferson Quotes About Freedom

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

Thomas Jefferson

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

Thomas Jefferson

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.

Thomas Jefferson

In every country and every age, the priest had been hostile to Liberty.

Thomas Jefferson

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

Thomas Jefferson

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

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

We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed.

Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson Quotes About War

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

Thomas Jefferson

War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses.

Thomas Jefferson

The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind.

Thomas Jefferson

Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state.

Thomas Jefferson

I think with the Romans, that the general of today should be a soldier tomorrow if necessary.

Thomas Jefferson

None but an armed nation can dispense with a standing army. To keep ours armed and disciplined is therefore at all times important.

Thomas Jefferson

The most successful war seldom pays for its losses.

Thomas Jefferson

I have seen enough of one war never to wish to see another.

Thomas Jefferson

More Quotes by Thomas Jefferson

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.

Thomas Jefferson

There is not a truth existing which I fear... or would wish unknown to the whole world.

Thomas Jefferson

Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none.

Thomas Jefferson

Wisdom I know is social. She seeks her fellows. But Beauty is jealous, and illy bears the presence of a rival.

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

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

Thomas Jefferson

No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of the garden.

Thomas Jefferson

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

Thomas Jefferson

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

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

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

Thomas Jefferson

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

Thomas Jefferson

Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy, and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it.

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 have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

Thomas Jefferson

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

Thomas Jefferson

I own that I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.

Thomas Jefferson

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

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

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

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

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

Thomas Jefferson

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

Thomas Jefferson

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

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

The second office in the government is honorable and easy; the first is but a splendid misery.

Thomas Jefferson

No duty the Executive had to perform was so trying as to put the right man in the right place.

Thomas Jefferson

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

Thomas Jefferson

The good opinion of mankind, like the lever of Archimedes, with the given fulcrum, moves the world.

Thomas Jefferson

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

Thomas Jefferson

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.

Thomas Jefferson

The natural cause of the human mind is certainly from credulity to skepticism.

Thomas Jefferson

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

Thomas Jefferson

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

Thomas Jefferson

Politics is such a torment that I advise everyone I love not to mix with it.

Thomas Jefferson

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.

Thomas Jefferson

No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free no one ever will.

Thomas Jefferson

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.

Thomas Jefferson

My theory has always been, that if we are to dream, the flatteries of hope are as cheap, and pleasanter, than the gloom of despair.

Thomas Jefferson

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

Thomas Jefferson

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

Thomas Jefferson

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

Thomas Jefferson

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

Thomas Jefferson

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

Thomas Jefferson

Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct.

Thomas Jefferson

There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents.

Thomas Jefferson

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

Thomas Jefferson

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

Thomas Jefferson

Browse 171 quotes attributed to Thomas Jefferson, listed in the source data as a American President, organized around themes such as Freedom, War, Honesty. Use the topic links to explore similar quotes, or browse the full author collection in one place.