Quotes from Thomas Jefferson

I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, and that his justice will not sleep forever.

Too old to plant trees for my own gratification, I shall do it for my posterity.

They (religions) dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subversions of the duperies on which they live.

I am a sect by myself, as far as I know.

Every generation needs a new revolution.

I cannot live without books: but fewer will suffice where amusement, and not use, is the only future object.

I am not among those who fear the people. They, and not the rich, are our dependence for continued freedom.

A nation which expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, expects that which never was and never will be.

A strict observance of the written laws is doubtless one of the highest virtues of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to written law would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property and all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the end to the means.

Peace is that brief glorious moment in history when everyone is standing around reloading

A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.

When the subject is strong, simplicity is the only way to treat it.

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

If by religion we are to understand sectarian dogmas, in which no two of them agree, then your exclamation on that hypothesis is just, that this would be the best of worlds if there were no religion in it.

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

The art of life is the art of avoiding pain.

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.

All that is necessary for a student is access to a library.

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

the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them, inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.

when you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on

Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous, and they are tied to their country and wedded to its liberty and interests by the most lasting bonds.

Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.

There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me.