2,194 Quotes by Thomas Jefferson

There is on the globe one single spot, the possessor of which is our natural and habitual enemy. It is New Orleans, through which the produce of three-eighths of our territory must pass to market, and from its fertility it will ere long yield more than half of our whole produce and contain more than half our inhabitants.

The sun has not caught me in bed in fifty years.

I have ever deemed it more honorable and more profitable, too, to set a good example than to follow a bad one.

[F]alsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions.

I had always hoped that the younger generation receiving their early impressions after the flame of liberty had been kindled in every breast . . . would have sympathized with oppression wherever found, and proved their love of liberty beyond their own share of it.

That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.

We might have been a free and great people together.

I never before knew the full value of trees. Under them I breakfast, dine, write, read and receive my company.

I have great confidence in the common sense of mankind in general.