I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it. – Thomas Jefferson Attributed
I am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greek and Roman leave to us. – Thomas Jefferson
No duty the Executive had to perform was so trying as to put the right man in the right place. – Thomas Jefferson
Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition. – Thomas Jefferson
It is always better to have no ideas than false ones; to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong. – Thomas Jefferson
Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state. – Thomas Jefferson
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. – Thomas Jefferson
If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour? – Thomas Jefferson
War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses. – Thomas Jefferson
As our enemies have found we can reason like men, so now let us show them we can fight like men also. – Thomas Jefferson
It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape. – Thomas Jefferson
I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion. – Thomas Jefferson
I think with the Romans, that the general of today should be a soldier tomorrow if necessary. – Thomas Jefferson
I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master. – Thomas Jefferson
The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government. – Thomas Jefferson
When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe. – Thomas Jefferson
Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question. – Thomas Jefferson
It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others: or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own. – Thomas Jefferson
