Quotes from Thomas Jefferson

The idea is quite unfounded that on entering into society we give up any natural rights.

Natural rights [are] the objects for the protection of which society is formed and municipal laws established.

Every man is under the natural duty of contributing to the necessities of the society; and this is all the laws should enforce on him.

Agreeable society is the first essential in constituting the happiness and of course the value of our existence.

It is a problem, not clear in my mind, that [a society without government, as among our Indians] is not the best. But I believe it to be inconsistent with any great degree of population.

Neither believe nor reject any thing because any other person, or description of persons have rejected or believed it. Your own reason is the only oracle given you by heaven.

Victory and defeat are each of the same price.

The art of life is the art of avoiding pain.

If I am to meet with a disappointment, the sooner I know it, the more of life I shall have to wear it off.

Always take hold of things by the smooth handle.

In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty.

Wine brightens the life and thinking of anyone

Music furnishes a delightful recreation for the hours of respite from the cares of the day, and lasts us through life.

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

He who knows best knows how little he knows.

The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it.

I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion.

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.

The majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society.

The mobs of great cities add just so much to the support of pure government as sores do to the strength of the human body.

We confide in our strength, without boasting of it, we respect that of others, without fearing it.

In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.

A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both, and deserve neither.

The Giver of life gave it for happiness and not for wretchedness.