Quote

Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct.

Thomas Jefferson

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Thomas Jefferson
Age: 83 †
Born: 1743
Born: April 2
Died: 1826
Died: July 4
3Rd U.S. President
Archaeologist
Architect
Cryptographer
Diplomat
Farmer
Inventor
Jurist
Lawyer
Philosopher
Politician
Slaveholder
President Jefferson
T. Jefferson
Whenever
Offices
Politician
Conduct
Office
Corruption
Politics
Cast
Eye
Greed
Political
Longing
Men
Casts
Begins
Rottenness

More quotes by Thomas Jefferson

Image
The objects of this primary education . . . would be . . . to form the statesmen, legislators and judges, on whom public prosperity and individual happiness are so much to depend.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Always take hold of things by the smooth handle grateful that they are not worse rather than the rough handle, bitter that they are not better.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
The chief purpose of government is to protect life. Abandon that and you have abandoned all.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
There is no justification for taking away individuals' freedom in the guise of public safety.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Government governed least is government governed best.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
I think all the world would gain by setting commerce at perfect liberty.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Health is value greater than studying.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
The government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
The construction applied . . . to those parts of the Constitution of the United States which delegate Congress a power . . . ought not to be construed as themselves to give unlimited powers, nor a part to be so taken as to destroy the whole residue of that instrument.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
If we move in mass, be it ever so circuitously, we shall attain our object but if we break into squads, everyone pursuing the path he thinks most direct, we become an easy conquest to those who can now barely hold us in check.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst, and cold.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
I believe in both a creative and personal God, a divinely ordered universe, that man has an innate moral sense, and that Jesus was a great moral teacher, perhaps the greatest the world has witnessed.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
It is surely time for men to think for themselves, and to throw off the authority of names so artificially magnified.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Can one generation bind another, and all others, in succession forever? I think not. The Creator has made the earth for the living, not the dead. Rights and powers can only belong to persons, not to things, not to mere matter endowed with will...Nothing is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
When the representative body have lost the confidence of their constituents, when they have notoriously made sale of their most valuable rights, when they have assumed to themselves powers which the people never put into their hands, then indeed their continuing in office becomes dangerous to the state
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Unmerited abuse wounds, while unmerited praise has not the power to heal.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
The moral sense is as much a part of our constitution as that of feeling, seeing, or hearing.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
We abhor the follies of war, and are not untried in its distresses and calamities. Unmeddling with the affairs of other nations, we had hoped that our distance and our dispositions would have left us free, in the example and indulgence of peace with all the world.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Every generation needs a new revolution.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others... An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens.... Power is not alluring to pure minds and is not with them the primary principle of contest.
Thomas Jefferson