Quotes by Jefferson, Thomas

"My only fear is that I may live too long. This would be a subject of dread to me."

Jefferson, Thomas on age and aging
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"The world is indebted for all triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression."

Jefferson, Thomas on debt   

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

Jefferson, Thomas on dream
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"Never spend your money before you have earned it."

Jefferson, Thomas on economy and economics
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"Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day."

Jefferson, Thomas on education
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"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"

Jefferson, Thomas on equality
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"Walking is the best possible exercise. Habituate yourself to walk very fast."

Jefferson, Thomas on exercise
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"The happiest moments of my life have been the few which I have passed at home in the bosom of my family."

Jefferson, Thomas on family
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"This is the fourth?"

Jefferson, Thomas on famous last words
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"In the fevered state of our country, no good can ever result from any attempt to set one of these fiery zealots to rights, either in fact or principle. They are determined as to the facts they will believe, and the opinions on which they will act. Get by them, therefore, as you would by an angry bull; it is not for a man of sense to dispute the road with such an animal."

Jefferson, Thomas on fanatics and fanaticism   

"Whenever there are in any country uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labor and live on. The small landowners are the most precious part of a state."

Jefferson, Thomas on farming and farmers   

"We seldom report of having eaten too little."

Jefferson, Thomas on food and eating   

"Agriculture, manufactures, commerce, and navigation, the four pillars of our prosperity, are then most thriving when left most free to individual enterprise. Protection from casual embarrassments, however, may sometimes be seasonably interposed."

Jefferson, Thomas on free enterprise   

"The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object."

Jefferson, Thomas on freedom
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"But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life; and thanks to a benevolent arrangement of things, the greater part of life is sunshine."

Jefferson, Thomas on friends and friendship
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"To myself, personally, it brings nothing but increasing drudgery and daily loss of friends."

Jefferson, Thomas on friends and friendship   

"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?"

Jefferson, Thomas on friends and friendship   

"No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of the garden."

Jefferson, Thomas on gardening and gardens   

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"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."

Jefferson, Thomas on generals   

"I think with the Romans, that the general of today should be a soldier tomorrow if necessary."

Jefferson, Thomas on generals   

"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."

Jefferson, Thomas on generations   

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"Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none."

Jefferson, Thomas on alliances
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"Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights."

Jefferson, Thomas on government
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"The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government."

Jefferson, Thomas on government
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"My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government."

Jefferson, Thomas on government
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"I have no ambition to govern men. It is a painful and thankless office"

Jefferson, Thomas on government
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"That government is the strongest of which every man feels himself a part."

Jefferson, Thomas on government
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"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."

Jefferson, Thomas on greed
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"It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape."

Jefferson, Thomas on guilt   

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

Jefferson, Thomas on happiness
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"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."

Jefferson, Thomas on happiness   

"A mind always employed is always happy. This is the true secret, the grand recipe, for felicity."

Jefferson, Thomas on happiness
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"The sovereign invigorator of the body is exercise, and of all the exercises walking is the best."

Jefferson, Thomas on health   

"Honesty is the first chapter of the book of wisdom."

Jefferson, Thomas on honesty
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"Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong."

Jefferson, Thomas on ignorance
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"Information is the currency of democracy."

Jefferson, Thomas on information
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"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever."

Jefferson, Thomas on justice   

"Great innovations should not be forced on slender majorities."

Jefferson, Thomas on innovation   

"Take not from the mouth of labor the bread it as earned."

Jefferson, Thomas on labor   

"Certainly one of the highest duties of the citizen is a scrupulous obedience to the laws of the nation. But it is not the highest duty."

Jefferson, Thomas on law and lawyers