Quote

Our ancestors ... were laborers, not lawyers.

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
Lawyer
Laborers
Ancestors
Lawyers
Ancestor

More quotes by Thomas Jefferson

Image
[n regard to Jesus believing himself inspired] This belief carried no more personal imputation than the belief of Socrates that he was under the care and admonition of a guardian demon. And how many of our wisest men still believe in the reality of these inspirations while perfectly sane on all other subjects
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Above all things, and at all times, practice yourself in good humor.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
No religious reading, instruction or exercise, shall be prescribed or practiced [in the elementary schools] inconsistent with the tenets of any religious sect or denomination.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
From the dissensions among Sects themselves arise necessarily a right of choosing and necessity of deliberating to which we will conform. But if we choose for ourselves, we must allow others to choose also, and so reciprocally, this establishes religious liberty.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Honesty is the first chapter in the Book of wisdom. Let it be our endeavor to merit the character of a just nation.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
The Central Bank is an institution of the most deadly hostility existing against the principles and form of our Constitution.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Newspapers . . . serve as chimnies to carry off noxious vapors and smoke.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
The man who loves his country on its own account, and not merely for its trappings of interest or power, can never be divorced for it, can never refuse to come forward when he finds that she is engaged in dangers which he has the means of warding off.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
The Constitution is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
One precedent in favor of power is stronger than a hundred against it.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
It is not to the moderation and justice of others we are to trust for fair and equal access to market with out productions, or for our due share in the transportation of them but to our own means of independence, and the firm will to use them.
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
When the subject is strong, simplicity is the only way to treat it.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
I tolerate with the utmost latitude the right of others to differ from me in opinion without imputing to them criminality.
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
No man has done everything he can who has done only his best.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Now I will avow, that I then believed and now believe that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God and that those principles of liberty are as unalterable as human nature and our terrestrial, mundane system.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
In a world which furnishes so many employments which are useful, and so many which are amusing, it is our own fault if we ever know what ennui [boredom] is, or if we are ever driven to the miserable resource of gaming, which corrupts our dispositions, and teaches us a habit of hostility against all mankind.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Man is not made for the State but the State for man and it derives its just powers only from the consent of the governed.
Thomas Jefferson