WIST

Timid men … prefer the calm of despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) US President (1801-09)
Letter to Philip Mazzei (24 Apr 1796)
Full text.

We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable; that all men are created equal & independant, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent & inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) US President (1801-09)
“Original Rough Draught” of the Declaration of Independence (Jun. 1776)
Source: The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Julian P. Boyd (1950).

The possession of facts is knowledge, the use of them is wisdom.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) US President (1801-09)
(Attributed)

It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) US President (1801-09)
(Attributed)

I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) US President (1801-09)
(Attributed)

I am mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, the sale of a book can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) US President (1801-09)
(Attributed)

I cannot live without books.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) US President (1801-09)
(Attributed)

No man will ever bring out of the Presidency the reputation which carries him into it.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) US President (1801-09)
(Attributed)

God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) US President (1801-09)
(Attributed)

Truth is great and will prevail if left to herself. She is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from 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 (1743-1826) US President (1801-09)
(Attributed)

I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) US President (1801-09)
(Attributed)

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 (1743-1826) US President (1801-09)
(Attributed)

He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second time.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) US President (1801-09)
(Attributed)

When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) US President (1801-09)
(Attributed)

Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on them [public offices], a rottenness begins in his conduct.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) US President (1801-09)
(Attributed)

A strict observance of the written law is doubtless one of the high duties of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) US President (1801-09)
(Attributed)

Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) US President (1801-09)
(Attributed)

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) US President (1801-09)
(Attributed)

Say nothing of my religion. It is known to God and myself alone. Its evidence before the world is to be sought in my life: if it has been honest and dutiful to society the religion which has regulated it cannot be a bad one.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) US President (1801-09)
(Attributed)

Neither believe nor reject anything because any other persons … rejected or believed it. Your own reason is the only oracle given you by heaven.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) US President (1801-09)
(Attributed)

When a man assumes a public trust, he should consider himself as public property.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) US President (1801-09)
(Attributed)

It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) US President (1801-09)
(Attributed)

Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) US President (1801-09)
(Attributed)
Who Moved My Cheese? calendar, 2002

I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) US President (1801-09)
(Attributed)

Religion is a subject on which I have ever been most scrupulously reserved. I have considered it as a matter between every man and his Maker, in which no other, and far less the public, had a right to intermeddle.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) US President (1801-09)
(Attributed)

In matters of style, swim with the current; In matters of principle, stand like a rock.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) US President (1801-09)
(Attributed)

Were we directed from Washington when to sow, & when to reap, we should soon want bread.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) US President (1801-09)
Autobiography (1821)

The bill for establishing religious freedom, the principles of which had, to a certain degree, been enacted before, I had drawn in all the latitude of reason and right. It still met with opposition; but, with some mutilations in the preamble, it was finally passed; and a singular proposition proved that its protection of opinion was meant to be universal.

Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting “Jesus Christ,” so that it would read “A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;” the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) US President (1801-09)
Autobiography (1821)
Referring to the Virginia Act for Religious Freedom.

Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) US President (1801-09)
Declaration of Independence (4 Jul 1776)

Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) US President (1801-09)
First Inaugural Address (4 Mar. 1801)