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All men are created equal - beautiful words, aren’t they? But did you know that Thomas Jefferson - a Founding Father and the 3rd president of the United States - said them? Besides a myriad of notable achievements, Thomas Jefferson was also the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, and that’s exactly where this famous quote comes from! By now, you must have a pretty good idea about the topic of this article, and you are completely right in assuming that it is going to be a compendium of the most noteworthy Thomas Jefferson quotes. So, buckle up and get ready for an experience of immense wisdom from way back in time!
Like any prominent historical person, Mr. Jefferson had some curiosities about him. Now, we aren’t going to list all of the interesting facts about Thomas Jefferson here, but we just couldn’t resist some! For instance, did you know that he was the first politician in US history to formulate the thought of free public education? An idea preceding the times, surely! Another great belief that he had was that of universal healthcare - something to take note of, right? But, besides these grand intentions, he was also just a human being with a passion for wine, an obsession with books, and a great taste for gourmet food. One might say that Thomas Jefferson was, in fact, a Founding Foodie!
But why don’t you scroll on down below and check out the famous quotes that came straight from this Founding Father’s head for yourself? Be sure to vote for the beautiful quotes that moved you or inspired you so they will find their way to the top of our list. Then, once you are done with it, share these intelligent quotes with your friends!
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#1
"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."
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#2
"Do you want to know who you are? Don't ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you."
#7
"I sincerely believe... that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies."
#13
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
#14
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
#19
"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever."
#21
"Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude."
M. William Bell 3 years ago
“Unless that man happens to be owned by another. Then he should shut up and make me my breakfast.”
#25
"The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers."
#26
"When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe."
#28
"I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend."
#29
"Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty."
#30
"He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors."
#32
"The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time."
#34
"Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy, and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it."
M. William Bell 3 years ago
“No, Marcus. Of course I didn’t mean YOU! Get back to work before I break out my whip.”
#35
"I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be."
#38
"The glow of one warm thought is to me worth more than money."
#40
"If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretense of taking care of them, they must become happy."
#41
"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground."
Kim Contreras 3 years ago
Yes, although he said this so long ago, we are now seeing what he warned us about.
#43
"Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong."
#44
"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."
#46
"Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans and must be that of every free state."
#47
"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive."
#49
"If there is one principle more deeply rooted in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest."
#50
"The second office in the government is honorable and easy; the first is but a splendid misery."
#52
"War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses."
#53
"I think with the Romans, that the general of today should be a soldier tomorrow if necessary."
#56
"Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of a Censor - over each other."
#57
"As our enemies have found we can reason like men, so now let us show them we can fight like men also."
#58
"I have done for my country, and for all mankind, all that I could do, and I now resign my soul, without fear, to my God - my daughter to my country."
#59
"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because the law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual."
#60
"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."
#61
"Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny."
#62
"Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing."
#63
"Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains."
#65
"It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world."
#67
"Mankind is more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."
#68
"It is neither wealth nor splendor, but tranquility and occupation which give you happiness."
#69
"Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances."
#70
"Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition."
#71
"Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question."
#72
"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country."
#73
"A wise and frugal government, which 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."
#74
"But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life, and thanks to a benevolent arrangement the greater part of life is sunshine."
#75
"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."
#77
"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences of attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it."
#79
"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."
#80
"I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master."
#83
"I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led, and bearding every authority which stood in their way."
#84
"The republican is the only form of government that is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind."
#85
"For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their best security."
#86
"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?"
#90
"Peace and abstinence from European interferences are our objects, and so will continue while the present order of things in America remains uninterrupted."
#91
"To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical."
#92
"I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely happier for it."
#94
"My theory has always been, that if we are to dream, the flatteries of hope are as cheap and pleasanter, than the gloom of despair."
#96
"We may consider each generation as a distinct nation, with a right, by the will of its majority, to bind themselves, but none to bind the succeeding generation, more than the inhabitants of another country."
#101
"To penetrate and dissipate these clouds of darkness, the general mind must be strengthened by education."
#104
"None but an armed nation can dispense with a standing army. To keep ours armed and disciplined is therefore at all times important."
#105
"Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories."
#106
"Bodily decay is gloomy in prospect, but of all human contemplations, the most abhorrent is a body without mind."
#107
"The Creator has not thought proper to mark those in the forehead who are of stuff to make good generals. We are first, therefore, to seek them blindfold, and then let them learn the trade at the expense of great losses."
#108
"In truth, politeness is artificial good humor, it covers the natural want of it, and ends by rendering habitual a substitute nearly equivalent to real virtue."
#109
"The world is indebted for all triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression."
#110
"No duty the Executive had to perform was so trying as to put the right man in the right place."
#112
"It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape."
#113
"An association of men who will not quarrel with one another is a thing which has never yet existed, from the greatest confederacy of nations down to a town meeting or a vestry."
#116
"So confident am I in the intentions, as well as wisdom, of the government, that I shall always be satisfied that what is not done, either cannot or ought not to be done."
#118
"It is always better to have no ideas than false ones; to believe nothing than to believe what is wrong."
#119
"The moment a person forms a theory, his imagination sees in every object only the traits which favor that theory."
#121
"I am mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, the sale of a book can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too."
#122
"The good opinion of mankind, like the lever of Archimedes, with the given fulcrum, moves the world."
#124
"I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."
#125
"The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government."
#126
"Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none."
#127
"A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference."
#128
"Leave all the afternoon for exercise and recreation, which are as necessary as reading. I will rather say more necessary because health is worth more than learning."
#129
"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."
#130
"Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter."
#134
"It is our duty still to endeavor to avoid war; but if it shall actually take place, no matter by whom brought on, we must defend ourselves. If our house be on fire, without inquiring whether it was fired from within or without, we must try to extinguish it."
#135
"The constitutions of most of our States assert that all power is inherent in the people; that... it is their right and duty to be at all times armed."
#137
"I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion."
#140
"The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this and learn to imitate it."
#141
"It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own."
#142
"No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of the garden."
#143
"Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day."
#145
"Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by the consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence."
#147
"Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor."
#152
"Friendship is but another name for an alliance with the follies and the misfortunes of others. Our own share of miseries is sufficient: why enter then as volunteers into those of another?"
#153
"No government ought to be without censors, and where the press is free no one ever will."
#154
"In defense of our persons and properties under actual violation, we took up arms. When that violence shall be removed, when hostilities shall cease on the part of the aggressors, hostilities shall cease on our part also."
#155
"Wisdom I know is social. She seeks her fellows. But beauty is jealous, and illy bears the presence of a rival."
#158
"I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others."
#159
"I am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy that Greek and Roman leave to us."
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Annabeth Chase 3 years ago
(about Alexander Hamilton) "He knows nothing of loyalty. Smells like new money, dresses like fake royalty. Desperate to rise above his station. Everything he does betrays the ideals of our nation. And if you don't know, now you know Mr President."
Annabeth Chase 3 years ago
(about Alexander Hamilton) "He knows nothing of loyalty. Smells like new money, dresses like fake royalty. Desperate to rise above his station. Everything he does betrays the ideals of our nation. And if you don't know, now you know Mr President."
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