2,194 Quotes by Thomas Jefferson

All the capital employed in paper speculation is barren and useless, producing, like that on a gaming table, no accession to itself, and is withdrawn from commerce and agriculture where it would have produced addition to the common mass It nourishes in our citizens habits of vice and idleness instead of industry and morality It has furnished effectual means of corrupting such a portion of the legislature as turns the balance between the honest voters whichever way it is directed.

Having labored faithfully in establishing the right of self-government, we see in the rising generation, into whose hands it is passing, that purity of principle and energy of character which will protect and preserve it through their day, and deliver it over to their sons as they receive it from their fathers.

It is strangely absurd to suppose that a million human beings, collected together, are not under the same moral laws which bind each of them separately.

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.

Against us are all timid men who prefer the calm of despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty We are likely to preserve the liberty we have obtained only by unremitting labors and perils.

Every man is under the natural duty of contributing to the necessities of the society; and this is all the laws should enforce on him.

A superintending power to maintain the Universe in its course and order.

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

I would observe to you that what is called style in writing or speaking is formed very early in life while the imagination is warm, and impressions are permanent.