Quotes from Thomas Jefferson

Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong.

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

Establish the eternal truth that acquiescence under insult is not the way to escape war.

It should be remembered, as an axiom of eternal truth in politics, that whatever power in any government is independent, is absolute also.

It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more completely deprive the nation of its benefits than is done by its abandoned prostitution to falsehood.

The man who fears no truths has nothing to fear from lies.

Truth is great and will prevail if left to herself.

Truth and reason are eternal. They have prevailed. And they will eternally prevail; however, in times and places they may be overborne for a while by violence, military, civil, or ecclesiastical.

With those who wish to think amiss of me, I have learnt to be perfectly indifferent: but where I know a mind to be ingenuous, andto need only truth to set it to rights, I cannot be as passive.

Error indeed has often prevailed by the assistance of power or force. Truth is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error.

No experiment can be more interesting than that we are now trying, and which we trust will end in establishing the fact, that man may be governed by reason and truth.

I am not myself apt to be alarmed at innovations recommended by reason. That dread belongs to those whose interests or prejudices shrink from the advance of truth and science.

The variety of opinions leads to questions. Questions lead to truth.

Truth can stand by itself...If there be but one right [religion], and [Christianity] that one, we should wish to see the nine hundred and ninety-nine wandering sects gathered into the fold of truth.

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

If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour?

When angry count to ten before you speak. If very angry, count to one hundred.

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

If God is just, I tremble for my country.

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.

All we can do is to make the best of our friends, love and cherish what is good in them, and keep out of the way what is bad.

Courts love the people always, as wolves do the sheep.

Ministers and merchants love nobody.

The human character, we believe, requires in general constant and immediate control to prevent its being biased from right by the seductions of self-love.