2,194 Quotes by Thomas Jefferson

Shake hands with Pain, give greeting unto Grief, Those angels in disguise, and thy glad soul From height to height, from star to shining star, Shall climb and claim blest immortality.

No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another; and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him.

My opinion is that there would never have been an infidel, if there had never been a priest. The artificial structures they have built on the purest of all moral systems, for the purpose of deriving from it pence and power, revolts those who think for themselves, and who read in that system only what is really there.

The sovereign invigorator of the body is exercise, and of all the exercises walking is the best.

Agriculture, manufactures, commerce, and navigation, the four pillars of our prosperity, are the most thriving when left most free to individual enterprise.

The greatest calamity which could befall us would be submission to a government of unlimited powers.

If we did a good act merely from love of God and a belief that it is pleasing to Him, whence arises the morality of the Atheist? ...Their virtue, then, must have had some other foundation than the love of God.

The days of life are consumed, one by one, without an object beyond the present moment; ever flying from the ennui of that, yet carrying it with us; eternally in pursuit of happiness, which keeps eternally before us. If death or bankruptcy happen to trip us out of the circle, it is matter for the buzz of the evening, and is completely forgotten by the next morning.

Hemp is one of the greatest, most important substances of our nation