2,194 Quotes by Thomas Jefferson

Knowledge indeed is a desirable, a lovely possession.

I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world and do not find in our particular superstition [Christianity] one redeeming feature.

Government as well as religion has furnished its schisms, its persecutions and its devices for fattening idleness on the earnings of the people.

Our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them.

In a free society with a government based on reason, it is inevitable that there will be no uniform opinion about important issues. Those accustomed to suppression and control by governmental authority see this as leading only to chaos. But a government of the people requires difference of opinion in order to discover truth and to take advantage of the opportunity that only understanding brings.

Let us in education dream of an aristocracy of achievement arising out of a democracy of opportunity

The happiest moments of my life have been the few which I have passed at home in the bosom of my family.

Truth will do well enough if left to shift for herself.

If ever we are constrained to lift the hatchet against any tribe, we will never lay it down till that tribe is exterminated, or driven beyond the Mississippi... in war, they will kill some of us; we shall destroy them all.