Quotes from Thomas Jefferson

It is neither wealth nor splendor; but tranquillity and occupation which give happiness.

While wading through the whimsies, the puerilities, and unintelligible jargon of this work, I laid it down often to ask myself how it could have been that the world should have so long consented to give reputation to such nonsense as this?

The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government

No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another, and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him

Information is the currency of democracy

A bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inferences

The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite

An elective despotism was not the government we fought for, but one which should not only be founded on true free principles, but in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among general bodies of magistracy, as that no one could transcend their legal limits without being effectually checked and restrained by the others

The greatest calamity which could befall us would be submission to a government of unlimited powers

Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burned, tortured, fined, and imprisoned, yet we have not advanced one inch toward uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half of the world fools and the other half hypocrites.

If there be one principle more deeply rooted than any other in the mind of every American, it is, that we should have nothing to do with conquest

If the body be feeble, the mind will not be strong.

I am opposed to any form of tyranny over the mind of man.

Victory and defeat are each of the same price.

No nation is drunken where wine is cheap, and none sober where the dearness of wine substitutes ardent spirits as the common beverage.

By making this wine vine known to the public, I have rendered my country as great a service as if I had enabled it to pay back the national debt.

We never repent of having eaten too little.

There is...an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents.... The artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient in government, and provisions should be made to prevent its ascendancy.

We discover in the gospels, a groundwork of vulgar ignorance, of things impossible, of superstition, fanaticism and fabrication

Every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle.

I hope we shall take warning from the example of England and crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations which dare already to challenge our Government to trial, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.

Force is the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism.

Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, then that of blindfolded fear.

The unsuccessful strugglers against tyranny have been the chief martyrs of treason laws in all countries.