Quotes from Thomas Jefferson

And what more sublime delight than to... share our bread with one to whom misfortune has left none!

Whether the succeeding generation is to be more virtuous than their predecessors I cannot say; but I am sure they will have more worldly wisdom, and enough, I hope, to know that honesty is the 1st chapter in the book of wisdom.

I sincerely believe... that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies.

Questions of natural right are triable by their conformity with the moral sense and reason of man.

No provision in our Constitution ought to be dearer to man than that which protects the rights of conscience against the enterprises of the civil authority.

A single zealot may commence prosecutor, and better men be his victims.

Amplification is the vice of modern oratory. It is an insult to an assembly of reasonable men, disgusting and revolting instead ofpersuading. Speeches measured by the hour, die by the hour.

All men are created equal.

I am tired of a life of contention, and of being the personal object for the hatred of every man, who hates the present state of things.

All men are created equal and have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The problem you had wished to propose to me was one which I could not have solved; for I know nothing of the facts. I read no newspaper now but Ritchie's, and in that chiefly the advertisements, for they contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper. I feel a much greater interest in knowing what passed two or three thousand years ago, than in what is now passing.

This world abounds indeed with misery: to lighten its burthen we must divide it with one another.