Quote

If you have any duty which must be done, and it seems disagreeable, do it promptly and have it over.

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
Duty
Seems
Done
Must
Promptly
Disagreeable

More quotes by Thomas Jefferson

Image
At the time we were funding our national debt, we heard much about a public debt being a public blessing that the stock representing it was a creation of active capital for the aliment of commerce, manufactures and agriculture. This paradox was well adapted to the minds of believers in dreams.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
That these are our grievances which we have thus laid before his majesty, with that freedom of language and sentiment which becomes a free people claiming their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Chemistry is yet, indeed, a mere embryon. Its principles are contested experiments seem contradictory their subjects are so minute as to escape our senses and their result too fallacious to satisfy the mind. It is probably an age too soon to propose the establishment of a system.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
If some period be not fixed, either by the Constitution or by practice, to the services of the First Magistrate, his office, though nominally elective, will, in fact, be for life, and that will soon degenerate into an inheritance.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well-organized and armed militia is their best security.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
If we can but prevent the government from wasting the labours of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
The same political parties which now agitiate the US have existed through all time. And in fact the terms of whig and tory belong to natural as well as to civil history. They denote the temper and constitution and mind of different individuals.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
It is as useless to argue with those who have renounced the use of reason as to administer medication to the dead.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
We are not immortal ourselves, my friend how can we expect our enjoyments to be so? We have no rose without its thorn no pleasure without alloy. It is the law of our existence and we must acquiesce.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
A nation, as a society, forms a moral person, and every member of it is personally responsible for his society.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Knowledge indeed is a desirable, a lovely possession.
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
Under the law of nature, all men are born free, every one comes into the world with a right to his own person, which includes the liberty of moving and using it at his own will. This is what is called personal liberty, and is given him by the Author
Thomas Jefferson
Image
Slavery is an abomination and must be loudly proclaimed as such, but I own that I nor any other man has any immediate solution to the problem.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
The best defense of democracy is an informed electorate.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
We abhor the follies of war, and are not untried in its distresses and calamities. Unmeddling with the affairs of other nations, we had hoped that our distance and our dispositions would have left us free, in the example and indulgence of peace with all the world.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
The genuine and simple religion of Jesus will one day be restored: such as it was preached and practiced by Himself.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
I have given up newspapers in exchange for Tacitus and Thucydides, for Newton and Euclid and I find myself much the happier.
Thomas Jefferson
Image
A lottery is a salutary instrument and a tax... laid on the willing only, that is to say, on those who can risk the price of a ticket without sensible injury, for the possibility of a higher prize.
Thomas Jefferson