It is incumbent on every generation by Thomas Jefferson

It is incumbent on every generation
by 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

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

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

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.
- Thomas Jefferson

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I have no ambition to govern men; it is a painful and thankless office.
- Thomas Jefferson

Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show
by what road it will pass to destruction,
to wit: by consolidation of power first,
and then corruption, its necessary consequence.
- Thomas Jefferson

Leave all the afternoon for exercise and recreation,
which are as necessary as reading.
I will rather say more necessary
because health is worth more than learning.
- Thomas Jefferson

When a man assumes a public trust
he should consider himself a public property.
- Thomas Jefferson

Dependence begets subservience and venality,
suffocates the germ of virtue,
and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.
- Thomas Jefferson

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

The interests of a nation, when well understood,
will be found to coincide with their moral duties.
- Thomas Jefferson

All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle,
that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail,
that will to be rightful must be reasonable;
that the minority possess their equal rights,
which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.
- Thomas Jefferson

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

Liberty is to the collective body,
what health is to every individual body.
Without health no pleasure can be tasted by man;
without liberty, no happiness can be enjoyed by society.
- Thomas Jefferson

History, in general, only informs us of what bad government is.
- Thomas Jefferson

The way to silence religious disputes is to take no notice of them.
- Thomas Jefferson

I am mortified to be told that, in the United States of America,
the sale of a book can become a subject of inquiry,
and of criminal inquiry too.
- Thomas Jefferson

I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge,
never fearing to follow truth and reason
to whatever results they led,
and bearding every authority which stood in their way.
- Thomas Jefferson

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

A democracy is nothing more than mob rule,
where fifty-one percent of the people
may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.
- attributed to Thomas Jefferson

Whenever the people are well-informed,
they can be trusted with their own government.
- 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.
- Thomas Jefferson

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It is incumbent on every generationby Thomas Jefferson

It is incumbent on every generation
by Thomas Jefferson