Quote

I have ever deemed it more honorable and more profitable, too, to set a good example than to follow a bad one.

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
Deemed
Profitable
Honorable
Follow
Example
Ever
Good

More quotes by Thomas Jefferson

Image
Truth is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless, by human interposition, disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
The several states composing the United States of America are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Every man has a commission to admonish, exhort, convince another of error.
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
Unmerited abuse wounds, while unmerited praise has not the power to heal.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
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
Image
The Earth is given as a common for men to labor and live in.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
I wish I was a despot that I might save the noble, the beautiful trees that are daily falling sacrifice to the cupidity of their owners, or the necessity of the poor. The unnecessary felling of a tree, perhaps the growth of centuries, seems to me a crime little short of murder.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Private fortunes, in the present state of our circulation, are at the mercy of those self-created money lenders, and are prostrated by the floods of nominal money with which their avarice deluges us.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
A noiseless course, not meddling with the affairs of others, unattractive of notice, is a mark that society is going on in happiness. If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them, they must become happy.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
I find that he is happiest of whom the world says least, good or bad.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
It is in our lives and not our words that our religion must be read.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Our people shall be free
Thomas Jefferson
Image
It is strangely absurd to suppose that a million of human beings, collected together, are not under the same moral laws which bind each of them separately.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
If ever there was a holy war, it was that which saved our liberties and gave us independence.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Thomas Jefferson