Thomas Jefferson quotes - page 5

A little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. (Thomas Jefferson)
A lively and lasting sense of filial duty is more effectually impressed on the mind of a son or daughter by reading King Lear, than by all the dry volumes of ethics, and divinity, that ever were written. View quote
Thomas Jefferson
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. View quote
Thomas Jefferson
I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. View quote
Thomas Jefferson
History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes Letter to von Humboldt, 1813. View quote
Thomas Jefferson
I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious. View quote
Thomas Jefferson
Politics, like religion, hold up torches of martyrdom to the reformers of error. View quote
Thomas Jefferson
Bigotry is the disease of ignorance, of morbid minds enthusiasm of the free and buoyant. education and free discussion are the antidotes of both. View quote
Thomas Jefferson
All persons shall have full and free liberty of religious opinion nor shall any be compelled to frequent or maintain any religious institution. View quote
Thomas Jefferson
I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to Heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all. View quote
Thomas Jefferson
He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world's believing him. This falsehood of tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions. (Thomas Jefferson)
The greatest service which can be rendered any country is to add an useful plant to its culture; especially, a bread grain; next in value to bread is oil. View quote
Thomas Jefferson
Religion is a subject on which I have ever been most scrupulously reserved. I have considered it as a matter between every man and his Maker in which no other, and far less the public, had a right to intermeddle. View quote
Thomas Jefferson
I have always said, and always will say, that the studious perusal of the sacred volume will make better citizens, better fathers, and better husbands. View quote
Thomas Jefferson
We have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, self-preservation in the other. View quote
Thomas Jefferson
My religious reading has long been confined to the moral branch of religion, which is the same in all religions; while in that branch which consists of dogmas, all differ. View quote
Thomas Jefferson
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. View quote
Thomas Jefferson
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive. View quote
Thomas Jefferson
We in America do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate. View quote
Thomas Jefferson
Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state. View quote
Thomas Jefferson
To constrain the brute force of the people, the European governments deem it necessary to keep them down by hard labor, poverty and ignorance, and to take from them, as from bees, so much of their earnings, as that unremitting labor shall be necessary to obtain a sufficient surplus to sustain a scanty and miserable life. (Thomas Jefferson)
A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both, and deserve neither. View quote
Thomas Jefferson
The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do. View quote
Thomas Jefferson
I'm a great believer in luck, and I find that the harder I work, the more I have of it. View quote
Thomas Jefferson
They (preachers) dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subversions of the duperies on which they live. View quote
Thomas Jefferson