We may consider each generation as a distinct nation, by Thomas Jefferson

We may consider each generation as a distinct nation,
by Thomas Jefferson

Don't talk about what you have done
or what you are going to do.
- Thomas Jefferson

We are not afraid to follow truth
wherever it may lead,
nor to tolerate any error
so long as reason is left free to combat it.
- Thomas Jefferson

I believe that every human mind feels pleasure
in doing good to another.
- Thomas Jefferson

In matters of style, swim with the current;
in matters of principle, stand like a rock.
- Thomas Jefferson

Truth is certainly a branch of morality
and a very important one to society.
- Thomas Jefferson

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

Whenever you do a thing,
act as if all the world were watching.
- Thomas Jefferson

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.
- Thomas Jefferson

I never considered a difference of opinion
in politics, in religion, in philosophy,
as cause for withdrawing from a friend.
- Thomas Jefferson

Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.
- Thomas Jefferson
(also attributed to Benjamin Franklin and Lord Chesterfield)

The happiest moments my heart knows are those in which
it is pouring forth its affections to a few esteemed characters.
- Thomas Jefferson

Do you want to know who you are?
Don't ask. Act!
Action will delineate and define you.
- Thomas Jefferson

Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another
as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.
- Thomas Jefferson

I am a great believer in luck
and I find that the harder
I work the more I have of it.
- Thomas Jefferson

When angry, count to ten before you speak.
If very angry, count to one hundred.
- Thomas Jefferson

It is always better to have no ideas than false ones;
to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong.
- Thomas Jefferson

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.
- Thomas Jefferson

He who knows nothing is closer to the truth
than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.
- Thomas Jefferson

How much pain they have cost us,
the evils which have never happened.
- Thomas Jefferson

Wisdom I know is social.
She seeks her fellows.
But Beauty is jealous,
and illy bears the presence of a rival.
- Thomas Jefferson

The good opinion of mankind,
like the lever of Archimedes,
with the given fulcrum, moves the world.
- Thomas Jefferson

Fix reason firmly in her seat,
and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion.
Question with boldness even the existence of a God;
because, if there be one,
he must more approve of the homage of reason,
than that of blindfolded fear.
- Thomas Jefferson

There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me.
- Thomas Jefferson

It is in our lives and not our words
that our religion must be read.
- Thomas Jefferson

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

Walking is the best possible exercise.
Habituate yourself to walk very fast.
- Thomas Jefferson

Speeches that are measured by the hour
will die with the hour.
- Thomas Jefferson

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

I find that he is happiest
of whom the world says least, good or bad.
- Thomas Jefferson

Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations;
entangling alliances with none.
- Thomas Jefferson

Educate and inform the whole mass of the people ...
They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.
- Thomas Jefferson

The moment a person forms a theory,
his imagination sees in every object
only the traits which favor that theory.
- Thomas Jefferson

It is neither wealth nor splendor;
but tranquility and occupation which give you happiness.
- Thomas Jefferson

It takes time to persuade men to do even
what is for their own good.
- Thomas Jefferson

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold
is for people of good conscience to remain silent.
- Thomas Jefferson

Bodily decay is gloomy in prospect,
but of all human contemplations,
the most abhorrent is body without mind.
- Thomas Jefferson

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

A wise and frugal government,
which shall leave men free to regulate
their own pursuits of industry and improvement,
and shall not take from the mouth
of labor and the bread it has earned -
this is the sum of good government.
- Thomas Jefferson

The spirit of this country is totally adverse to a large military force.
- Thomas Jefferson

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

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

It is incumbent on every generation
to pay its own debts as it goes.
A principle which if acted on would
save one-half the wars of the world.
- Thomas Jefferson

Every government degenerates when trusted
to the rulers of the people alone.
The people themselves are its only safe depositories.
- Thomas Jefferson

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.
- 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?
- Thomas Jefferson

When the people fear their government, there is tyranny;
when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
- Thomas Jefferson

Do not bite at the bait of pleasure,
till you know there is no hook beneath it.
- Thomas Jefferson

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?
- Thomas Jefferson

I sincerely believe that banking establishments
are more dangerous than standing armies,
and that the principle of spending money
to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding,
is but swindling futurity on a large scale.
- 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.
- Thomas Jefferson

Advertisements contain the only truths
to be relied on in a newspaper.
- Thomas Jefferson

Timid men prefer the calm of despotism
to the tempestuous sea of liberty.
- Thomas Jefferson

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

We are not to expect to be translated from
despotism to liberty in a featherbed.
- Thomas Jefferson

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

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We may consider each generation as a distinct nation,by Thomas Jefferson

We may consider each generation as a distinct nation,
by Thomas Jefferson