Quotes By Thomas Jefferson

When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, an hundred.

How much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened!

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

No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free, no one ever will.

Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread.

The happiness of the domestic fireside is the first boon of Heaven; and it is well it is so, since it is that which is the lot of the mass of mankind.

When a man assumes a public trust, he should consider himself as public property.

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.

Delay is preferable to error.

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

A little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.

It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God.

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

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

Only aim to do your duty, and mankind will give you credit where you fail.

I cannot live without books, but fewer will suffice where amusement, and not use, is the only future object.

Honesty is the first chapter of the book wisdom.

The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.

All should be laid open to you without reserve, for there is not a truth existing which I fear, or would wish unknown to the whole world.

Science is my passion; politics, my duty.