Thomas Jefferson

“Do you want to know who you are? Don't ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.”

“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 may be done if we are always doing.”

“I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.”

“Power is not alluring to pure minds.”

“Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong.”

“I abhor war and view it as the greatest scourge of mankind.”

“Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.”

“For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their best security.”

“Friendship is but another name for an alliance with the follies and the misfortunes of others. Our own share of miseries is sufficient: why enter then as volunteers into those of another?”

“Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.”

“In every country and every age, the priest had been hostile to Liberty.”

“Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.”

“One travels more usefully when alone, because he reflects more.”

“Wisdom I know is social. She seeks her fellows. But Beauty is jealous, and illy bears the presence of a rival.”

“Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.”

“It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.”

“Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor.”

“When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty.”

“Question with boldness even the existence of a God because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.”

“Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.”

“There is not a truth existing which I fear... or would wish unknown to the whole world.”

“My only fear is that I may live too long. This would be a subject of dread to me.”

“Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed us, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits.”

“But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life, and thanks to a benevolent arrangement the greater part of life is sunshine.”