Thomas Jefferson quotes - page 2

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. (Thomas Jefferson)
Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty. View quote
Thomas Jefferson
I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend. View quote
Thomas Jefferson
The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground. View quote
Thomas Jefferson
Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto. View quote
Thomas Jefferson
We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed. View quote
Thomas Jefferson
War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses. View quote
Thomas Jefferson
One loves to possess arms, though they hope never to have occasion for them. View quote
Thomas Jefferson
The earth belongs to the living, not to the dead. View quote
Thomas Jefferson
The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind. View quote
Thomas Jefferson
There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me. (Thomas Jefferson)
Equal rights for all, special privileges for none. View quote
Thomas Jefferson
There is not a truth existing which I fear... or would wish unknown to the whole world. View quote
Thomas Jefferson
It is always better to have no ideas than false ones; to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong. View quote
Thomas Jefferson
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? View quote
Thomas Jefferson
I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. View quote
Thomas Jefferson
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. View quote
Thomas Jefferson
No freeman shall be debarred the use of arms. View quote
Thomas Jefferson
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. View quote
Thomas Jefferson
The second office in the government is honorable and easy; the first is but a splendid misery. View quote
Thomas Jefferson
Your own reason is the only oracle given you by heaven, and you are answerable for, not the rightness, but the uprightness of the decision. (Thomas Jefferson)
We confide in our strength, without boasting of it we respect that of others, without fearing it. View quote
Thomas Jefferson
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. View quote
Thomas Jefferson
I believe that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another. View quote
Thomas Jefferson
For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their best security. View quote
Thomas Jefferson