2,194 Quotes by Thomas Jefferson

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

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, it expects what never was and never will be ... The People cannot be safe without information. When the press is free, and every man is able to read, all is safe.

It is as useless to argue with those who have renounced the use of reason as to administer medication to the dead.

The construction applied . . . to those parts of the Constitution of the United States which delegate Congress a power . . . ought not to be construed as themselves to give unlimited powers, nor a part to be so taken as to destroy the whole residue of that instrument.

I prefer to be remembered for what I have done for others, not what others have done for me.

An honest heart being the first blessing, a knowing head is the second.

What has been the effect of coericion [sic]? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and errors all over the earth... [Instead] reason and persuasion are the only practicable instruments. To make way for these, free inquiry must be indulged; and how can we wish others to indulge it while we refuse it ourselves.

A mind always employed is always happy.

The only true corrective of Constitutional abuses is education.