Quotes from Thomas Jefferson

Erecting the 'wall of separation between church and state'... is absolutely essential in a free society.

A room without books is like a life without meaning.

If the children are untaught, their ignorance and vices will in future life cost us much dearer in their consequences than it would have done in their correction by a good education.

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.

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

The chief purpose of government is to protect life. Abandon that and you have abandoned all.

The God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?

I am sure that in estimating every man's value either in private or public life, a pure integrity is the quality we take first into calculation, and that learning and talents are only the second.

Whenever you are to do a thing, though it can never be known but to yourself, ask yourself how you would act were all the world looking at you, and act accordingly.

Of all exercises, walking is the best.

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

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

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

Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains.

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

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

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

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

One single object . . . [will merit] the endless gratitude of the society: that of restraining the judges from usurping legislation.

I know of no safe depository of the ultimate power of the society but the people themselves.

A nation, as a society, forms a moral person, and every member of it is personally responsible for his society.

What is true of every member of the society, individually, is true of them all collectively; since the rights of the whole can be no more than the sum of the rights of the individuals.

Liberty is to the collective body, what health is to every individual body. Without health no pleasure can be tasted by man; without liberty, no happiness can be enjoyed by society.

the qualifications for self-government in society are not innate. they are the result of habit and long training.