Facts about Thomas Jefferson 
Summary
Thomas Jefferson was a famous President from USA, who lived between April 13, 1743 and July 4, 1826.
Biography
He was the third president (1801-1809), second vice president (1797-1801) and an American statesman.
He was ambassador to France, political philosopher, revolutionary, land use, gardener, land owner, architect, archaeologist, a slave owner (he tried throughout his tenure to repeal or reduce slavery), author, inventor and founder of the University of Virginia. Jefferson was one of the key people behind the United States Declaration of Independence.
Many people consider Jefferson as the most brilliant man that has ever been president. President John F. Kennedy welcomed 49 Nobel laureates to the White House in 1962 by saying that "I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent of human knowledge that has ever been gathered in the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone. "companies from his time as president include the Louisiana purchase and Lewis and Clark expedition. Our collection contains 144 quotes who is written / told by Thomas, under the main topics: Fitness, Friendship, Government, Motivational, Travel.
Related authors: Alexander Hamilton, John F. Kennedy
Source / external links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson
Famous quotes by Thomas Jefferson (144)
"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"
"Do you want to know who you are? Don't ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you"
"When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on"
"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"
"Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of a Censor - over each other"
"Do not bite at the bait of pleasure, till you know there is no hook beneath it"
"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it"
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be"
"If God is just, I tremble for my country"
"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?"
"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"
"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"
"It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape"
"It is neither wealth nor splendor; but tranquility and occupation which give you happiness"
"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"
"It takes time to persuade men to do even what is for their own good"
"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"
"Leave no authority existing not responsible to the people"
"Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed"
"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"
"Money, not morality, is the principle commerce of civilized nations"
"None but an armed nation can dispense with a standing army. To keep ours armed and disciplined is therefore at all times important"
"Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct"
"Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government"
"Whenever you do a thing, act as if all the world were watching"
"Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe"
"Wisdom I know is social. She seeks her fellows. But Beauty is jealous, and illy bears the presence of a rival"
"Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today"
"For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their best security"
"He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors"
"I have no ambition to govern men; it is a painful and thankless office"
"I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be"
"I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend"
"In every country and every age, the priest had been hostile to Liberty"
"It is in our lives and not our words that our religion must be read"
"Never spend your money before you have earned it"
"No duty the Executive had to perform was so trying as to put the right man in the right place"
"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 blind-folded fear"
"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 law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual"
"The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind"
"In truth, politeness is artificial good humor, it covers the natural want of it, and ends by rendering habitual a substitute nearly equivalent to the real virtue"
"It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God"
"The good opinion of mankind, like the lever of Archimedes, with the given fulcrum, moves the world"
"The natural cause of the human mind is certainly from credulity to skepticism"
"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?"
"He who knows best knows how little he knows"
"I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past"
"Truth is certainly a branch of morality and a very important one to society"
"We never repent of having eaten too little"
"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"
"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"
"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"
"Walking is the best possible exercise. Habituate yourself to walk very fast"
"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"
"Force is the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism"
"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"
"It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself"
"Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none"
"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"
"The moment a person forms a theory, his imagination sees in every object only the traits which favor that theory"
"The second office in the government is honorable and easy; the first is but a splendid misery"
"Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong"
"We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed"
"I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man"
"In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock"
"No man will ever carry out of the Presidency the reputation which carried him into it"
"No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of the garden"
"Peace and abstinence from European interferences are our objects, and so will continue while the present order of things in America remain uninterrupted"
"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"
"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"
"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground"
"Don't talk about what you have done or what you are going to do"
"Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty"
"Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day"
"Errors of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it"
"Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state"
"Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories"
"Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom"
"How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened"
"I abhor war and view it as the greatest scourge of mankind"
"I am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greek and Roman leave to us"
"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"
"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies"
"I believe that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another"
"I cannot live without books"
"I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it"
"I find that he is happiest of whom the world says least, good or bad"
"I own that I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive"
"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them"
"I think with the Romans, that the general of today should be a soldier tomorrow if necessary"
"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever"
"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"
"The boisterous sea of liberty is never without a wave"
"The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government"
"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"
"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"
"The earth belongs to the living, not to the dead"
"The glow of one warm thought is to me worth more than money"
"The spirit of this country is totally adverse to a large military force"
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants"
"The way to silence religious disputes is to take no notice of them"
"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"
"The world is indebted for all triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression"
"There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents"
"There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me"
"There is not a truth existing which I fear... or would wish unknown to the whole world"
"Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty"
"To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical"
"When a man assumes a public trust he should consider himself a public property"
"When angry count to ten before you speak. If very angry, count to one hundred"
"When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty"
"When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe"
"Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances"
"Nothing is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man"
"One loves to possess arms, though they hope never to have occasion for them"
"One man with courage is a majority"
"One travels more usefully when alone, because he reflects more"
"Only aim to do your duty, and mankind will give you credit where you fail"
"Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence"
"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"
"Speeches that are measured by the hour will die with the hour"
"Taste cannot be controlled by law"
"That government is the strongest of which every man feels himself a part"
"The advertisement is the most truthful part of a newspaper"
"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"
"A coward is much more exposed to quarrels than a man of spirit"
"A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be your constant companion of your walks"
"A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which 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, and this is necessary to close the circlue of our felicities"
"Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper"
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent"
"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"
"Always take hold of things by the smooth handle"
"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"
"An enemy generally says and believes what he wishes"
"An injured friend is the bitterest of foes"
"As our enemies have found we can reason like men, so now let us show them we can fight like men also"
"Be polite to all, but intimate with few"
"Bodily decay is gloomy in prospect, but of all human contemplations the most abhorrent is body without mind"
"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"
"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"
"Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto"
"Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government"
"Delay is preferable to error"
"Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition"
Comments
|
Age
Create Timeline Photo
More info