Quotes from Thomas Jefferson

Reading, reflection and time have convinced me that the interests of society require the observation of those moral precepts only in which all religions agree.

From the nature of things, every society must at all times possess within itself the sovereign powers of legislation.

There is a fulness of time when men should go, and not occupy too long the ground to which others have a right to advance.

No country and no people can be free and ignorant at the same time.

Love your neighbor as yourself and your country more than yourself.

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.

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

It is strangely absurd to suppose that a million of human beings, collected together, are not under the same moral laws which bind each of them separately.

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

Nobody can acquire honor by doing what is wrong.

Self-interest, or rather self-love, or egoism, has been more plausibly substituted as the basis of morality.

The love of justice and the love of country plead equally the cause of these people, and it is a moral reproach to us that they should have pleaded it so long in vain.

Self-love . . . is the sole antagonist of virtue, leading us constantly by our propensities to self-gratification in violation of our moral duties to others.

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

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

Peace and abstinence from European interferences are our objects, and so will continue while the present order of things in America remain uninterrupted.

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.

All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.

The Creator has not thought proper to mark those in the forehead who are of stuff to make good generals. We are first, therefore, to seek them blindfold, and then let them learn the trade at the expense of great losses.

We might have been a free and great people together.

This ball of liberty, I believe most piously, is now so well in motion that it will roll round the globe. at least the enlightened part of it, for light & liberty go together.

That one hundred and fifty lawyers should do business together ought not to be expected.

Traveling makes men wiser, but less happy.

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