I have only one desire, and that is the desire for solitude-to disappear into God, to be submerged in His peace, to be lost in the secret of His Face

am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and Constitutions. But laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind.

Leave no authority existing not responsible to the people

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniencies attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.Leave all the afternoon for exercise and recreation, which are as necessary as reading. I will rather say more necessary because health is worth more than learning.

Perfect happiness, I believe, was never intended by the Deity to be the lot of one of his creatures in this world; but that he has very much put in our power the nearness of our approaches to it, is what I have steadfastly believed.

Advertisements… contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.

If our house be on fire, without inquiring whether it was fired from within or without, we must try to extinguish it.

If I am to meet with a disappointment, the sooner I know it, the more of life I shall have to wear it off.

Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.

I find friendship to be like wine, raw when new, ripened with age, the true old man’s milk and restorative cordial.

Do not bite at the bait of pleasure, till you know there is no hook beneath it.

Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy, and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it.

There is not a truth existing which I fear… or would wish unknown to the whole world.

Only aim to do a duty, and mankind will give you credit where you fail.

The glow of one warm thought is to me worth more than money.

Leave all the afternoon for exercise and recreation, which are as necessary as reading. I will rather say more necessary because health is worth more than learning

Freedom, the first-born of science.

That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.

Self-love is no part of morality. Indeed it is exactly its counterpart. It is the sole antagonist of virtue leading us constseseantly by our propensities to self-gratification in violation of our moral duties to others.

Everything is useful which contributes to fix in the principles and practices of virtue.

Man is an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all education in him. From his cradle to his grave he is learning to do what he sees others do.

No people who are ignorant can be truly free

Dispositions of the mind, like limbs of the body, acquire strength by exercise.

To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.

Whenever you do a thing, act as if all the world were watching.

I have no ambition to govern men; it is a painful and thankless office.

He who knows best knows how little he knows.

Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.

Don’t talk about what you have done or what you are going to do.

When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.

Never spend your money before you have earned it.

Never put off to tomorrow what you can do today.

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.

Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed us, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits

I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led.

I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery.

The happiest moments of my life have been the few which I have passed at home in the bosom of my family.

The art of life is the art of avoiding pain.

The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.

I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.

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

I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.

It is always better to have no ideas than false ones; to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong.

Take care of your cents; dollars will take care of themselves.

The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. 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.

There is nothing more unequal than the equal treatment of unequal people.

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.

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

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

Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppression of the body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.

I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.

Be polite to all, but intimate with few.

Every day is lost in which we do not learn something useful. Man has no nobler or more valuable possession than time.

I had rather be shut up in a very modest cottage with my books, my family and a few old friends, dining on simple bacon, and letting the world roll on as it liked, than to occupy the most splendid post, which any human power can give.

History, in general, only informs us what bad government is.

Do not bite at the bait of pleasure, till you know there is no hook beneath it.

believe that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another.

But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life, and thanks to a benevolent arrangement the greater part of life is sunshine

I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.

Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.

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.

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.

When angry count to ten before you speak. If very angry, count to one hundred.

I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it.

If you want something you’ve never had, you must be willing to do something you’ve never done.

I predict future happiness for Americans, if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.

But I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power, the greater it will be.

I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.

I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.

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.

Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.

That government is the strongest of which every man feels himself a part.

Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none.

Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing.

Educate and inform the whole mass of the people… They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.

How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened.

No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of the garden.

Money, not morality, is the principle commerce of civilized nations

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.

One man with courage is a majority.

Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

Walking is the best possible exercise. Habituate yourself to walk very far.

Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.

A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what not just the government should refuse, or rest on inference.

Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must approve more of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.

Do you want to know who you are? Don’t ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you

The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.

The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.

Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom. Thomas Jefferson I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man

I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.god

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.