Thomas Jefferson the President, biography, facts and quotes

"Delay is preferable to error"

"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"

"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?"

"How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened"

"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"

"When a man assumes a public trust he should consider himself a public property"

"The glow of one warm thought is to me worth more than money"

"The world is indebted for all triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression"

"Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong"

"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"

"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"

"Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances"

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

"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it"

"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"

"Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed"

"Leave no authority existing not responsible to the people"

"Always take hold of things by the smooth handle"

"The advertisement is the most truthful part of a newspaper"

"Force is the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism"

"The second office in the government is honorable and easy; the first is but a splendid misery"

"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"

"I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past"

"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 abhor war and view it as the greatest scourge of mankind"

"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 own that I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive"

"I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man"

"Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct"

"Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty"

"There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents"

"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground"

"There is not a truth existing which I fear... or would wish unknown to the whole world"

"There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me"

"The way to silence religious disputes is to take no notice of them"

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants"

"The spirit of this country is totally adverse to a large military force"

"When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on"

"When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe"

"When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty"

"When angry count to ten before you speak. If very angry, count to one hundred"

"We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed"

"To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical"

"I find that he is happiest of whom the world says least, good or bad"

"I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it"

"I cannot live without books"

"I believe that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another"

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies"

"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"

"The earth belongs to the living, not to the dead"

Occup.	President
From	USA
Born	April 13, 1743
Died	July 4, 1826
Aged	83 years

Thomas Jefferson Biography

144 Famous quotes by Thomas Jefferson