Quote

I have no ambition to govern men it is a painful and thankless office.

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
Govern
Painful
Ambition
Office
Politics
Pain
Political
Men
Thankless

More quotes by Thomas Jefferson

Image
What justice would there be to take this life? Justice, gentlemen? Why, I would just as soon put a hog in the electric chair as this.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
That the several states who formed that instrument, being sovereign and independent, have the unquestionable right to judge of its infraction and that a nullification, by those sovereignties, of all unauthorized acts done under colour of that instrument, is the rightful remedy.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Delay is preferable to error.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
The art of printing secures us against the retrogradation of reason and information.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
I had rather ask an enlargement of power from the nation, where it is found necessary, than to assume it by a construction which would make our powers boundless.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Good wine is a necessity of life for me.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
We have no right to prejudice another in his civil enjoyments because he is of another church.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
There is not a truth existing which I fear... or would wish unknown to the whole world.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Those who wish to be ignorant and free, believe in something that never was and never shall be.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Ignorance of the law is no excuse in any country. If it were, the laws would lose their effect, because it can always be pretended.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
God grant that men of principle shall be our principal men.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Your own reason is the only oracle given you by heaven, and you are answerable for, not the rightness, but the uprightness of the decision
Thomas Jefferson
Image
It is between fifty and sixty years since I read it (i.e. the Book of Revelations), and I then considered it merely the ravings of a maniac, no more worthy nor capable of explanation than the incoherence of our own nightly dreams.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Experience has already shown that the impeachment the Constitution has provided is not even a scarecrow.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
The doctrines of Jesus are simple and tend all to the happiness of man, that there is only one God and God is perfect. That God and man are one. That to love God with all your heart, and your neighbor as yourself, is the sum of religion. These are the great points on which I endeavor to reform and live my life.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
The earth belongs to the living, not to the dead.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Taxation is, in fact, the most difficult function of government and that against which their citizens are most apt to be refractory.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous. . . .
Thomas Jefferson
Image
I have ever deemed it more honorable and more profitable, too, to set a good example than to follow a bad one.
Thomas Jefferson