Quotes from Thomas Jefferson

Man is fed with fables through life, and leaves it in the belief he knows something of what has been passing, when in truth he has known nothing but what has passed under his own eye

The happiest moments of my life have been the few which I have passed at home in the bosom of my family.

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

Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed us, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits.

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.

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

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.

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

I have lived temperately, eating little animal food, and that not as an aliment, so much as a condiment for the vegetables, which constitute my principal diet.

On a hot day in Virginia, I know nothing more comforting than a fine spiced pickle, brought up trout-like from the sparkling depths of the aromatic jar below the stairs of Aunt Sally's cellar.

By making this wine 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.

I have lived temperately....I double the doctor's recommendation of a glass and a half wine each day and even treble it with a friend.

Wine from long habit has become an indispensable for my health

Happiness is not being pained in body or troubled in mind.

Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.

There is no justification for taking away individuals' freedom in the guise of public safety.

To consider judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions is a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy.

When you abandon freedom to achieve security, you lose both and deserve neither.

He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.

The only security of all is in a free press.

What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

My God! How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy!

Take not from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.