The quotations of

Thomas Jefferson

Founding Father, U.S. president from 1801 to 1809

1743–1826

73 quotes, most often on Government, America and Truth & Lies. Part of the U.S. Presidents and Founding Fathers collections.

The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to.
Letter to Marquis de la Fayette (November 4, 1823); in: The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Memorial Edition (ME) (Lipscomb and Bergh, editors), 20 Vols., Washington, D.C., 1903-04, Volume 15, page 491
- Politics
It is strangely absurd to suppose that a million of human beings, collected together, are not under the same moral laws which bind each of them separately.
- Morality
It is error alone that needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.
A letter to Horatio Spofford (1814)
- Government
- Truth & Lies
When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, a hundred.
Letter to Thomas Jefferson Smith (February 21, 1825); reported in Paul L. Ford, ed., Writings of Thomas Jefferson vol. 10 (1899), p. 341.
- Anger
It is part of the American character to consider nothing as desperate⁠—to surmount every difficulty by resolution and contrivance.
- America
The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object.
- Government
If you are obliged to neglect any thing, let it be your chemistry. It is the least useful and the least amusing to a country gentleman of all the ordinary branches of science.
- Science
I have ever deemed it more honorable and more profitable, too, to set a good example than to follow a bad one.
I never believed there was one code of morality for a public and another for a private man.
- Morality
Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.
History, in general, only informs us what bad government is.
- Government
No man will ever bring out of the Presidency the reputation which carries him into it. To myself, personally, it brings nothing but increasing drudgery and daily loss of friends.
- Presidency
I would rather be exposed to the inconveniencies attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.
Letter to Archibald Stuart , Philadelphia (23 December 1791)
- Liberty
There is no act, however virtuous, for which ingenuity may not find some bad motive.
Letter to Edward Dowse (19 April 1803)
- Virtue
Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
Notes on the State of Virginia (1785), Query VI (Richmond, 1853), p. 33
- Truth & Lies

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