Quotes from Thomas Jefferson

If you serve humanity, you serve humanity's God.

Say nothing of my religion. It is known to my God and myself alone. Its evidence before the world is to be sought in my life; if that has been honest and dutiful to society, the religion which has regulated it cannot be a bad one.

He who permits himself to tell a lie once finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, 'til at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it and truths without the world's believing him. This falsehood of tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions.

Slavery] will yield in time to temperate & steady pursuit, to the enlargement of the human mind, and its advancement in science. We are not in a world ungoverned by the laws and the power of a superior agent, our efforts are in his hand, and directed by it; and he will give them their effect in his own time.

If you want something you've never had, you must be willing to do something you've never done.

Question with boldness even the existence of God, because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.

Liberty is the parent of science and of virtue, and a nation will be great in both in proportion as it is free.

On similar ground it may be proved that no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation. They may manage it then, and what proceeds from it, as they please, during their usufruct.

In the environment, every victory is temporary, every defeat permanent.

Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.

Honor, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us. We cannot endure the infamy and guilt of resigning succeeding generations to that wretchedness which inevitably awaits them if we basely entail hereditary bondage on them.

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.