Thomas Jefferson Quotes

I cannot live without books.

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.

Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have. The course of history shows us that as a government grows, liberty decreases.

Honesty is the first chapter of the book wisdom.

Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.

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.

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.

Men of quality are not threatened by women of equality.

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.

Just because somebody doesn't love you the way you want them to doesn't mean they don't love you with everything they got.

Religions are all alike -- founded upon fables and mythologies.

All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.

Those who sacrifice freedom for safety deserve neither.

I find as I grow older that I love those most whom I loved first.

The happiest moments my heart knows are those in which it is pouring forth its affections to a few esteemed characters.