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 Constitution of the United States asserts that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves; that it is their right and duty.
Letter to Justice William Johnson (1823)
- Government
Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and Father of the University of Virginia.
Posthumous publications
- America
- Life & Death
Experience declares that man is the only animal which devours his own kind; for I can apply no milder term to the governments of Europe, and to the general prey of the rich on the poor.
Letter to Colonel Edward Carrington (16 January 1787)
- Government
- Money
I hope we shall… crush in it’s birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country.
to George Logan, 1816
- Business
- Government
The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest.
A Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774)
- Government
- Truth & Lies
The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground.
Letter to Edward Carrington, Paris (27 May 1788)
- Government
- Liberty
Knowing that religion does not furnish grosser bigots than law, I expect little from old judges.
Letter to Thomas Cooper (1810)
- Clever Jabs
- Laws
The selfish spirit of commerce knows no country, and feels no passion or principle but that of gain.
Letter to Larkin Smith (1809)
- Business
- Money
For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well organized and armed militia is their best security.
Eighth State of the Union Address (8 November 1808)
- Freedom
- Guns
The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them.
Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774); The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (19 Vols., 1905) edited by Andrew A. Lipscomb and Albert Ellery Bergh, Vol. 1, p. 211
- God
- Liberty
I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.
Letter to James Madison (30 January 1787); referring to Shays’ Rebellion Lipscomb & Bergh ed. 6:65
- Politics
If a due participation of office is a matter of right, how are vacancies to be obtained? Those by death are few; by resignation, none.
Letter to Elias Shipman and others of New Haven (12 July 1801)
- Politics
I think myself that we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.
Letter to William Ludlow (6 September 1824)
- Government
I, however, place economy among the first and most important republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared.
Letter to William Plumer (21 July 1816)
- Economics
- Government
He who steadily observes the moral precepts in which all religions concur, will never be questioned at the gates of heaven as to the dogmas in which they all differ.
Letter to William Canby (18 September 1813)
- Morality
- Religion

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