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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

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Thomas Jefferson
Age: 83 †
Born: 1743
Born: April 2
Died: 1826
Died: July 4
3Rd U.S. President
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More quotes by Thomas Jefferson

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There is not a single crowned head in Europe whose talents or merit would entitle him to be elected a vestryman by the people of any parish in America.
Thomas Jefferson
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Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.
Thomas Jefferson
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I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others.
Thomas Jefferson
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Truth will do well enough if left to shift for herself. She seldom has received much aid from the power of great men to whom she is rarely known and seldom welcome. She has no need of force to procure entrance into the minds of men.
Thomas Jefferson
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An occasional insurrection will not weigh against the inconveniences of a government of force, such as are monarchies and aristocracies.
Thomas Jefferson
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The introduction of so powerful an agent as steam [to a carriage on wheels] will make a great change in the situation of man.
Thomas Jefferson
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I think all the world would gain by setting commerce at perfect liberty.
Thomas Jefferson
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The right to use a thing comprehends a right to the means necessary to its use, and without which it would be useless.
Thomas Jefferson
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Religious leaders will always avail themselves of public ignorance for their own purpose.
Thomas Jefferson
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If [God] has made it a law in the nature of man to pursue his own happiness, He has left him free in the choice of place as well as mode, and we may safely call on the whole body of English jurists to produce the map on which nature has traced for each individual the geographical line which she forbids him to cross in pursuit of happiness.
Thomas Jefferson
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The purpose of establishing different houses of legislation is to introduce the influence of different interests or different principles.
Thomas Jefferson
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If the children are untaught, their ignorance and vices will in future life cost us much dearer in their consequences than it would have done in their correction by a good education.
Thomas Jefferson
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No knowledge can be more satisfactory to a man than that of his own frame, its parts, their functions and actions.
Thomas Jefferson
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The last hope of human liberty in this world rests on us. we ought, for so dear a stake, to sacrifice every attachment & every enmity.
Thomas Jefferson
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The provisions we have made [for our government] are such as please ourselves they answer the substantial purposes of government and of justice, and other purposes than these should not be answered.
Thomas Jefferson
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Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends [life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness] it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government.
Thomas Jefferson
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The system of banking have[for]ever reprobated. I contemplate it as a blot left in all our Constitutions, which, if not covered, will end in their destruction, which is already hit by the gamblers in corruption, and is sweeping away in its progress the fortunes and morals of our citizens.
Thomas Jefferson
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Of publishing a book on religion, my dear sir, I never had an idea. I should as soon think of writing for the reformation of Bedlam, as of the world of religious sects. Of these there must be, at least, ten thousand, every individual of every one of which believes all wrong but his own.
Thomas Jefferson
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It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing.
Thomas Jefferson
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Students of reading, writing and common arithmetick . . . Graecian [Greek], Roman, English and American history . . . should be rendered . . . worthy to receive, and able to guard the sacred deposit of the rights and liberties of their fellow citizens.
Thomas Jefferson