Quotes from Thomas Jefferson

How soon the labor of men would make a paradise of the earth were it not for misgovernment and a diversion of his energies to selfish interests.

Excessive taxation . . . will carry reason & reflection to every man's door, and particularly in the hour of election.

A single zealot may commence prosecutor, and better men be his victims.

Men as well as rivers grow crooked by following the path of least resistance.

The authors of the gospels were unlettered and ignorant men and the teachings of Jesus have come to us mutilated, misstated and unintelligible.

Amplification is the vice of modern oratory. It is an insult to an assembly of reasonable men, disgusting and revolting instead ofpersuading. Speeches measured by the hour, die by the hour.

[T]he dignity of parliament it seems can brook no opposition to it's power. Strange that a set of men who have made sale of theirvirtue to the minister should yet talk of retaining dignity!

Tranquility is the old man's milk.

It is too late in the day for men of sincerity to pretend they believe in the Platonic mysticisms that three are one, and one is three; and yet that the one is not three, and the three are not one.

All men are created equal.

I am tired of a life of contention, and of being the personal object for the hatred of every man, who hates the present state of things.

No duty the Executive had to perform was so trying as to put the right man in the right place.

All men are created equal and have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments

An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens . . . There has never been a moment of my life in which I should have relinquished for it the enjoyments of my family, my farm, my friends and books.

I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground that 'all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states or to the people.' To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power not longer susceptible of any definition

A wise and frugal government ... shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government

It is in our lives and not our words that our religion must be read.

Health is the requisite after morality

Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.

History, by appraising. ..[the students] of the past, will enable them to judge of the future.

Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.

Great innovations should not be forced on slender majorities.