Thomas Jefferson
Third President of the United States and author of the Declaration of Independence, 1743-1826
25 quotes.
Quotes by Thomas Jefferson
- Be good, be learned, and be industrious, and you will not want the aid of travelling, to render you precious to your country, dear to your friends, happy within yourself.
- But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life; and thanks to a benevolent arrangement of things, the greater part of life is sunshine.
- Determine never to be idle...It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing.
- Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any. It is wonderful how much can be done if we are always doing.
- Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.
- Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.
- How much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened.
- I am sure that in estimating every man’s value either in private or public life, a pure integrity is the quality we take first into calculation, and that learning and talents are only the second.
- I have ever deemed it more honorable and profitable, too, to set a good example than to follow a bad one.
- I have never believed there was one code of morality for a public and another for a private man.
- If ever you find yourself environed with difficulties and perplexing circumstances, out of which you are at a loss how to extricate yourself, do what is right, and be assured that that will extricate you the best out of the worst situations.
- In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.
- Never buy what you do not want, because it is cheap; it will be dear to you.
- Never fear the want of business. A man who qualifies himself well for his calling, never fails of employment.
- Never put off till to-morrow what you can do to-day.
- Never spend your money before you have it.
- Never trouble another for what you can do yourself.
- No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time, who never loses any.
- Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.
- Nothing is troublesome that we do willingly.
- We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights: that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
- When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, an hundred.
- Whenever you are to do a thing, though it can never be known but to yourself, ask yourself how you would act were all the world looking at you, and act accordingly.
- 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.
- Who then can so softly bind up the wound of another as he who has felt the same wound himself?