Quote

The fortune of our lives depends on employing well the short period of our youth.

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
Youth
Lives
Wells
Employing
Well
Period
Fortune
Periods
Short
Depends

More quotes by Thomas Jefferson

Image
It will be said that great societies cannot exist without government.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
My passion strengthens daily to quit political turmoil, and retire into the bosom of my family, the only scene of sincere and purehappiness.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched?
Thomas Jefferson
Image
I have been happy . . . in believing that . . . whatever follies we may be led into as to foreign nations, we shall never give up our Union, the last anchor of our hope, and that alone which is to prevent this heavenly country from becoming an arena of gladiators.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
In a virtuous and free state, no rewards can be so pleasing to sensible minds, as those which include the approbation of our fellow citizens. My great pain is, lest my poor endeavours should fall short of the kind expectations of my country.
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
Though [the people] may acquiesce, they cannot approve what they do not understand.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Hemp is one of the greatest, most important substances of our nation
Thomas Jefferson
Image
It is so difficult to draw a clear line of separation between the abuse and the wholesome use of the press, that as yet we have found it better to trust the public judgment, rather than the magistrate, with the discrimination between truth and falsehood. And hitherto the public judgment has performed that office with wonderful correctness.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Many of the opposition [to the new Federal Constitution] wish to take from Congress the power of internal taxation. Calculation has convinced me that this would be very mischievous.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
The present generation has the same right of self-government which the past one has exercised for itself.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
The majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Above all things, lose no occasion of exercising your dispositions to be grateful, to be generous, to be charitable, to be humane, to be true, just, firm, orderly, courageous, etc. Consider every act of this kind as an exercise which will strengthen your moral faculties and increase your worth.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Those who wish to be ignorant and free, believe in something that never was and never shall be.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
When the course of events shall have removed you to distant scenes of action where laurels not nurtured with the blood of my country may be gathered, I shall urge sincere prayers for your obtaining every honor and preferment which may gladden the heart of a soldier.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Hemp is of first necessity to the wealth & protection of the country.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
While old men feel sensibly enough their own advance in years, they do not sufficiently recollect it in those whom they have seenyoung.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Congress has scarcely any thing to employ them, and complain that the place [Washington, D.C.] is remarkably dull.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
letters are not the first, but the last step in the progression from barbarism to civilisation.
Thomas Jefferson