2,194 Quotes by Thomas Jefferson

No people who are ignorant can be truly free.

No man will ever bring out of that office the reputation which carries him into it. The honeymoon would be as short in that case as in any other, and its moments of ecstasy would be ransomed by years of torment and hatred.

Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state.

When angry, count to 10 before you speak. If very angry, a hundred.

He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it the second time.

On matters of style, swim with the current, on matters of principle, stand like a rock.

Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions any more than our opinions in physics or geometry...

The greatest service which can be rendered any country is to add a useful plant to its culture.--The Fruit Hunters

And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away all this artificial scaffolding...{Letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823}