Quotes from Thomas Jefferson

Health, learning and virtue will ensure your happiness; they will give you a quiet conscience, private esteem and public honour.

A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.

Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.

Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.

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

The bulk of mankind are schoolboys through life.

I would observe to you that what is called style in writing or speaking is formed very early in life while the imagination is warm, and impressions are permanent.

I sincerely pray that all the members of the human family may, in the time prescribed by the Father of us all, find themselves securely established in the enjoyment of life, liberty, and happiness.

Everyone has a natural right to choose that vocation in life which he thinks most likely gives him comfortable subsistence.

It can never be too often repeated, that the time for fixing every essential right on a legal basis is while our rulers are honest, and ourselves united.

Peace, that glorious moment in time when everyone stops and reloads.

When habit has strengthened our sense of duties, they leave us no time for other things; but when young we neglect them and this gives us time for anything.