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Thomas Jefferson Quotes
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Thomas Jefferson was an American statesman, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States and the principal author of the Declaration of Independence. He later served as the third President of the United States from 1801 to 1809. Previously, he was elected the second Vice President of the United States, serving under John Adams from 1797 to 1801. A proponent of democracy, republicanism, and individual rights motivating American colonists to break from Great Britain and form a new nation, he produced formative documents and decisions at both the state and national level. He was a land owner and farmer.

Jefferson was primarily of English ancestry, born and educated in colonial Virginia. He graduated from the College of William & Mary and briefly practiced law, at times defending slaves seeking their freedom. During the American Revolution, he represented Virginia in the Continental Congress that adopted the Declaration, drafted the law for religious freedom as a Virginia legislator, and he served as a wartime governor . He became the United States Minister to France in May 1785, and subsequently the nation's first Secretary of State in 1790–1793 under President George Washington. Jefferson and James Madison organized the Democratic-Republican Party to oppose the Federalist Party during the formation of the First Party System. With Madison, he anonymously wrote the controversial Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions in 1798–1799, which sought to embolden states' rights in opposition to the national government by nullifying the Alien and Sedition Acts.

As President, Jefferson pursued the nation's shipping and trade interests against Barbary pirates and aggressive British trade policies. He also organized the Louisiana Purchase, almost doubling the country's territory. As a result of peace negotiations with France, his administration reduced military forces. He was reelected in 1804. Jefferson's second term was beset with difficulties at home, including the trial of former Vice President Aaron Burr. American foreign trade was diminished when Jefferson implemented the Embargo Act of 1807, responding to British threats to U.S. shipping. In 1803, Jefferson began a controversial process of Indian tribe removal to the newly organized Louisiana Territory, and he signed the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves in 1807.

Jefferson mastered many disciplines, which ranged from surveying and mathematics to horticulture and mechanics. He was a proven architect in the classical tradition. Jefferson's keen interest in religion and philosophy earned him the presidency of the American Philosophical Society. He shunned organized religion, but was influenced by both Christianity and deism. He was well versed in linguistics and spoke several languages. He founded the University of Virginia after retiring from public office. He was a prolific letter writer and corresponded with many prominent and important people throughout his adult life. His only full-length book is Notes on the State of Virginia , considered among the most important American books published before 1800.

Jefferson owned several plantations which were worked by hundreds of slaves. After the death of his wife Martha in 1782, he had a relationship with his slave Sally Hemings and fathered at least one of her children. Historians have lauded Jefferson's public life, noting his primary authorship of the Declaration of Independence during the Revolutionary War, his advocacy of religious freedom and tolerance in Virginia, and the Louisiana Purchase while he was president. Various modern scholars are more critical of Jefferson's private life, often pointing out the discrepancy between his ownership of slaves and his liberal political principles. Presidential scholars consistently rank Jefferson among the greatest presidents.

✵ 13. April 1743 – 4. July 1826
Thomas Jefferson photo
Thomas Jefferson: 456   quotes 19   likes

Thomas Jefferson Quotes

“Knowing that religion does not furnish grosser bigots than law, I expect little from old judges.”

Thomas Jefferson

Letter to Thomas Cooper (1810)
1810s

Religion , Law

“In a democratic republic, where the mass of the people of all parties have the same interest at stake, some respect must be had to the feelings and wishes of the minority, especially when that minority is large and clamorous; otherwise, it will be impossible to avoid discord, and discord weakens the bonds of union.”

Thomas Jefferson

Account of a conversation with Col. Richard M. Johnson in 1809, as recounted in A Biographical Sketch of Col. Richard M. Johnson of Kentucky, p.12 (Saxton & Miles, New York, 1843)
1800s, Post-Presidency (1809)

People , Feeling

“When, in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

Thomas Jefferson

1770s, Declaration of Independence (1776)

God , People , Law , Nature

“[I]f ever there was a holy war, it was that which saved our liberties and gave us independence.”

Thomas Jefferson

Letter to John W. Eppes (6 November 1813). Reported in Albert Ellery Bergh, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (1907), p. 430
1810s

War

“We are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.”

Thomas Jefferson

Letter https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/98-01-02-1712 to William Roscoe (27 December 1820)
1820s

Truth , Error

“I think myself that we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.”

Thomas Jefferson

Letter to William Ludlow (6 September 1824)
1820s

Thinking

“Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.”

Thomas Jefferson

Various; earliest source The Use of Force in International Affairs http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/21414360 (Philadelphia: Friends Peace Committee, 1961), 6, and popularized by various users in the 1960s:
If what your country is doing seems to you practically and morally wrong, is dissent the highest form of patriotism?
Dissent is the highest form of patriotism http://wiki.monticello.org/mediawiki/index.php/Dissent_is_the_highest_form_of_patriotism_(Quotation), Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia
Other form by historian Howard Zinn Dissent In Pursuit Of Equality, Life, Liberty And Happiness: An Interview With Historian Howard Zinn http://www.tompaine.com/Archive/scontent/5908.html by Sharon Basco, TomPaine.com http://TomPaine.com, July 03 2002 (The quote can be found in the first sentence of Mr. Zinn's first answer; nowhere in that article does Howard Zinn attribute that quote to Jefferson.):
While some people think that dissent is unpatriotic, I would argue that dissent is the highest form of patriotism.
Law professor Jim Lindgren of The Volokh Conspiracy has traced the possible origin of this saying back as far as the 11 November 1984 obituary of pacifist activist Dorothy Hewitt Hutchinson in the Philadelphia Inquirer, quoting a 1965 interview. The direct quote there is: "Dissent from public policy can be the highest form of patriotism," she said in an interview in 1965. "I don't think democracy can survive without it, even though you may be crucified by it at times." According to the professor's research http://volokh.com/posts/1146554363.shtml, the misattribution was popularized in the 1990's by ACLU president Nadine Strossen. Bill Mullins of the American Dialect Society did further research http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0605A&L=ADS-L&P=R1297&I=-3.
Misattributed

“We were laboring under a dropsical fulness of circulating medium. Nearly all of it is now called in by the banks, who have the regulation of the safety-valves of our fortunes, and who condense and explode them at their will. Lands in this State cannot now be sold for a year’s rent; and unless our Legislature have wisdom enough to effect a remedy by a gradual diminution only of the medium, there will be a general revolution of property in this state.”

Thomas Jefferson

Letter to John Adams (7 November 1819) http://oll.libertyfund.org/Home3/HTML.php?recordID=0054.12#hd_lf054-12_head_057 ME 15:224 : The Writings of Thomas Jefferson "Memorial Edition" (20 Vols., 1903-04) edited by Andrew A. Lipscomb and Albert Ellery Bergh, Vol. 15, p. 224
1810s

Wisdom

“There is no act, however virtuous, for which ingenuity may not find some bad motive.”

Thomas Jefferson

Letter to Edward Dowse (19 April 1803)
1800s, First Presidential Administration (1801–1805)

Motivation

“It is rare that the public sentiment decides immorally or unwisely, and the individual who differs from it ought to distrust and examine well his own opinion.”

Thomas Jefferson

Letter to William Findley, Washington (21 March 1801); published in Thomas Jefferson - A chronology of his thoughts (2002) by Jerry Holmes, p. 175 http://books.google.de/books?id=iOHNKGJGo94C&pg=PA175&lpg=PA175&dq=It+is+rare+that+the+public+sentiment+decides+immorally+or+unwisely,+and+the+individual+who+differs+from+it+ought+to+distrust+and+examine+well+his+own+opinion&source=bl&ots=lUHnglNeTO&sig=OfEnoz8qmlxJq-5jIEvC8dD1hOk&hl=de&sa=X&ei=V_zAUPqeCsjGtAaZ-YGYDQ&ved=0CEMQ6AEwAzgK#v=onepage&q=It%20is%20rare%20that%20the%20public%20sentiment%20decides%20immorally%20or%20unwisely%2C%20and%20the%20individual%20who%20differs%20from%20it%20ought%20to%20distrust%20and%20examine%20well%20his%20own%20opinion&f=false
1800s, First Presidential Administration (1801–1805)

“This is the Fourth?”

Thomas Jefferson

Last words (Jefferson died on 4 July 1826, the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence)
A few accounts declare that he asked on the night of the third: "Is it the fourth?" Most accounts declare the cited words were his last, and that he died a few hours before John Adams, whose last words are reported to have been: "Thomas — Jefferson — still surv — " or "Thomas Jefferson still survives.".
1820s

“Nothing more than education advances the prosperity, the power, and the happiness of a nation. ”

Thomas Jefferson
Education , Happiness

“The first consideration in immigration is the welfare of the receiving nation. In a new government based on principles unfamiliar to the rest of the world and resting on the sentiments of the people themselves, the influx of a large number of new immigrants unaccustomed to the government of a free society could be detrimental to that society. Immigration, therefore, must be approached carefully and cautiously.”

Thomas Jefferson

This misattribution seems to have originated as improper quoting of an actually site-created preamble to an online page of Jefferson's quotes or paraphrases at the site Family Guardian https://famguardian.org/index.htm — self described as a "Nonprofit Christian religious ministry dedicated to protecting people and families from extortion, persecution, exploitation, socialism, divorce, crime, and sin." Among the preambles to their pages, these remarks summarizing the site creators' assessments on "Immigration Policy" https://famguardian.org/subjects/politics/thomasjefferson/jeff1280.htm for their page of Jefferson's statements regarding the subject, have occasionally been wrongly copied and distributed in various internet articles and comments as if they were direct "quotes" of Jefferson, sometimes with spurious citations to specific documents, most commonly the source of the first actual quote citation on that page: an 1806 letter to Albert Gallatin. It should also be noted that even the provided "quotes" at this site are not absolutely reliable, as on their index page for quotes of Thomas Jefferson on Politics & Government https://famguardian.org/subjects/politics/thomasjefferson/jeffcont.htm they indicate that some of the "quotes" they use are modernized and "generalized" (or in other words: paraphrased) in ways which diverge slightly from literal quotations of the original sources cited.
Misattributed

World , People

“The Constitution of the United States asserts that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves; that it is their right and duty.”

Thomas Jefferson

Letter to Justice William Johnson (1823)
1820s

People , Exercises

“I can never join Calvin in addressing his god.”

Thomas Jefferson

He was indeed an Atheist, which I can never be; or rather his religion was Daemonism. If ever man worshipped a false god, he did. The being described in his 5 points is not the God whom you and I acknowledge and adore, the Creator and benevolent governor of the world; but a daemon of malignant spirit. It would be more pardonable to believe in no god at all, than to blaspheme him by the atrocious attributes of Calvin. Indeed I think that every Christian sect gives a great handle to Atheism by their general dogma that, without a revelation, there would not be sufficient proof of the being of a god.
Letter http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/jefferson_adams.html to John Adams (11 April 1823) (Scan at The Library of Congress) http://memory.loc.gov/master/mss/mtj/mtj1/053/0800/0841.jpg
1820s

God

“I do not believe that in the four administrations which have taken place, there has been a single instance of departure from good faith towards other nations. We may sometimes have mistaken our rights, or made an erroneous estimate of the actions of others, but no voluntary wrong can be imputed to us. In this respect England exhibits the most remarkable phaenomenon in the universe in the contrast between the profligacy of it’s government and the probity of it’s citizens. And accordingly it is now exhibiting an example of the truth of the maxim that virtue & interest are inseparable.”

Thomas Jefferson

It ends, as might have been expected, in the ruin of it’s people, but this ruin will fall heaviest, as it ought to fall on that hereditary aristocracy which has for generations been preparing the catastrophe. I hope we shall take warning from the example and crush in it’s birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country.
Letter to George Logan (12 November 1816). Published in The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes http://oll.libertyfund.org/ToC/0054.php, Federal Edition, Paul Leicester Ford, ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, Vol. 12 http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/Jefferson0136/Works/0054-12_Bk.pdf, pp. 43-44
1810s

Universe , Truth , Faith , Departure

“I deplore with you the putrid state into which our newspapers have passed, and the malignity, the vulgarity, & mendacious spirit of those who write for them: and I enclose you a recent sample, the production of a New England judge, as a proof of the abyss of degradation into which we are fallen. These ordures are rapidly depraving the public taste and lessening its relish for sound food. As vehicles of information and a curb on our functionaries, they have rendered themselves useless by forfeiting all title to belief. That this has in a great degree been produced by the violence and malignity of party spirit I agree with you…”

Thomas Jefferson

Letter to Walter Jones (2 January 1814) https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-07-02-0052.
1810s

Food

“Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains. In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own. It is easier to acquire them, and to effect this, they have perverted the best religion ever preached to man into mystery and jargon, unintelligible to all mankind, and therefore the safer engine for their purposes. With the lawyers it is a new thing. They have, in the mother country, been generally the primest supporters of the free principles of their constitution. But there, too, they have changed.”

Thomas Jefferson

Letter to Horatio G. Spafford (17 March 1814)
1810s

Drawing , Religion , Hostility , Country

“About to enter, fellow-citizens, on the exercise of duties which comprehend everything dear and valuable to you, it is proper you should understand what I deem the essential principles of our Government, and consequently those which ought to shape its Administration. I will compress them within the narrowest compass they will bear, stating the general principle, but not all its limitations. Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none; the support of the State governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against antirepublican tendencies; the preservation of the General Government in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad; a jealous care of the right of election by the people -- a mild and safe corrective of abuses which are lopped by the sword of revolution where peaceable remedies are unprovided; absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority, the vital principle of republics, from which is no appeal but to force, the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism; a well-disciplined militia, our best reliance in peace and for the first moments of war till regulars may relieve them; the supremacy of the civil over the military authority; economy in the public expense, that labor may be lightly burthened; the honest payment of our debts and sacred preservation of the public faith; encouragement of agriculture, and of commerce as its handmaid; the diffusion of information and arraignment of all abuses at the bar of the public reason; freedom of religion; freedom of the press, and freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus, and trial by juries impartially selected. These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages and blood of our heroes have been devoted to their attainment. They should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civic instruction, the touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust; and should we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety.”

Thomas Jefferson

1800s, First Inaugural Address (1801)

Home , Peace , Faith , Religion

“I learn with great satisfaction that you are about committing to the press the valuable historical and State papers you have been so long collecting. Time and accident are committing daily havoc on the originals deposited in our public offices. The late war has done the work of centuries in this business. The last cannot be recovered, but let us save what remains; not by vaults and locks which fence them from the public eye and use in consigning them to the waste of time, but by such a multiplication of copies, as shall place them beyond the reach of accident.”

Thomas Jefferson

Letter to a Mr. Hazard (18 February 1791) published in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (1853), Vol. 2, edited by Henry Augustine Washington, p. 211
1790s

Business , War , Time , Learning

“I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive. It places the governors indeed more at their ease at the expense of the people. The late rebellion in Massachusetts has given much more alarm than I think it should have done. Calculate that one rebellion in thirteen States in the course of eleven years is but one for each State in a century and a half. No country should be so long without one. Nor will any degree of power in the hands of the government prevent insurrections. In England, where the hand of power is heavier than with us, there are seldom half a dozen years without an insurrection. In France, where it is still heavier but less despotic, as Montesquieu supposes, than in some other countries and where there are always two or three hundred thousand men ready to crush insurrections, there have been three in the course of the three years I have been here, in every one of which greater numbers were engaged than in Massachusetts.”

Thomas Jefferson

Letter to James Madison, Paris, (20 December 1787), The Political Writings Of Thomas Jefferson, Dumbauld, Edit. (1955) pp. 67-68
1780s

Country , Thinking , People , Men

“It is really to be lamented that after a public servant has passed a life in important and faithful services, after having given the most plenary satisfaction in every station, it should yet be in the power of every individual to disturb his quiet, by arraigning him in a gazette and by obliging him to act as if he needed a defence, an obligation imposed on him by unthinking minds which never give themselves the trouble of seeking a reflection unless it be presented to them. However it is a part of the price we pay for our liberty, which cannot be guarded but by the freedom of the press, nor that be limited without danger of losing it. To the loss of time, of labour, of money, then, must be added that of quiet, to which those must offer themselves who are capable of serving the public, and all this is better than European bondage. Your quiet may have suffered for a moment on this occasion, but you have the strongest of all supports that of the public esteem.”

Thomas Jefferson

Letter to John Jay from Paris, France (January 25, 1786). Source: “ From Thomas Jefferson to John Jay, 25 January 1786 https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-09-02-0190,” Founders Online, National Archives, last modified June 13, 2018. [Original source: The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 9, 1 November 1785 – 22 June 1786, ed. Julian P. Boyd. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1954, p. 215.]
1780s

Money , Loss , Faith , Time

“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.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

Thomas Jefferson

1770s, Declaration of Independence (1776)

People , Truth , Self-confidence , Life

“Well aware that the opinions and belief of men depend not on their own will, but follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to their minds; that Almighty God hath created the mind free, and manifested his supreme will that free it shall remain by making it altogether insusceptible of restraint; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments, or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, who being lord both of body and mind, yet choose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do, but to exalt it by its influence on reason alone; that the impious presumption of legislature and ruler, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world and through all time: That to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical; … that our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry; and therefore the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust or emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religions opinion, is depriving him injudiciously of those privileges and advantages to which, in common with his fellow-citizens, he has a natural right; that it tends also to corrupt the principles of that very religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing with a monopoly of worldly honours and emolumerits, those who will externally profess and conform to it; that though indeed these are criminals who do not withstand such temptation, yet neither are those innocent who lay the bait in their way; that the opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction; that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency is a dangerous fallacy, which at once destroys all religious liberty, … and finally, that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself; that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the 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

A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom, Chapter 82 (1779). Published in The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes http://oll.libertyfund.org/ToC/0054.php, Federal Edition, Paul Leicester Ford, ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, Vol. 1 http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/Jefferson0136/Works/0054-01_Bk.pdf, pp. 438–441. Comparison of Jefferson's proposed draft and the bill enacted http://web.archive.org/web/19990128135214/http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7842/bill-act.htm
1770s

Confidence , Dependency , Self-confidence , Falseness

“I am not afraid to appeal to the nation at large, to posterity, and still less to that Being Who sees Himself our motives, Who will judge us from His own knowledge of them.”

Thomas Jefferson

Writings (1904), Vol. XI, p. 44, to Abigail Adams on July 22, 1804.
1800s

Knowledge , Motivation

“If, in my retirement to the humble station of a private citizen, I am accompanied with the esteem and approbation of my fellow citizens, trophies obtained by the bloodstained steel, or the tattered flags of the tented field, will never be envied. The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government.”

Thomas Jefferson

Letter to the Republican Citizens of Washington County, Maryland (31 March 1809), published in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (1871), edited by H. A. Washington, Vol. 8, p. 165 https://www.bartleby.com/73/778.html
1800s, Post-Presidency (1809)

Happiness , Life , Envy

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

Thomas Jefferson

Letter From Thomas Jefferson to the Rev. James Madison, 19 July 1788
1780s

Idea , Falseness

“To the corruptions of Christianity I am indeed opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian, in the only sense he wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others; ascribing to himself every human excellence; & believing he never claimed any other.”

Thomas Jefferson

Letter to Benjamin Rush (12 April 1803) https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-40-02-0178-0001
1800s, First Presidential Administration (1801–1805)

Sense , Sincerity

“Friendship is but another name for an alliance with the follies and the misfortunes of others. Our own share of miseries is sufficient: why enter then as volunteers into those of another?”

Thomas Jefferson
Friendship

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

Thomas Jefferson
Hope , Wisdom

“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.”

Thomas Jefferson
Friendship , Life , Parting , Friendship

“The art and mystery of banks… is established on the principle that 'private debts are a public blessing.”

Thomas Jefferson

That the evidences of those private debts, called bank notes, become active capital, and aliment the whole commerce, manufactures, and agriculture of the United States. Here are a set of people, for instance, who have bestowed on us the great blessing of running in our debt about two hundred millions of dollars, without our knowing who they are, where they are, or what property they have to pay this debt when called on; nay, who have made us so sensible of the blessings of letting them run in our debt, that we have exempted them by law from the repayment of these debts beyond a give proportion (generally estimated at one-third). And to fill up the measure of blessing, instead of paying, they receive an interest on what they owe from those to whom they owe; for all the notes, or evidences of what they owe, which we see in circulation, have been lent to somebody on an interest which is levied again on us through the medium of commerce. And they are so ready still to deal out their liberalities to us, that they are now willing to let themselves run in our debt ninety millions more, on our paying them the same premium of six or eight per cent interest, and on the same legal exemption from the repayment of more than thirty millions of the debt, when it shall be called for.
ME 13:420
1810s, Letters to John Wayles Eppes (1813)

Art

“Widespread poverty and concentrated wealth cannot long endure side by side in a democracy”

Thomas Jefferson

Attributed to Jefferson in speeches by FDR http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/campaign-address/ and JFK, https://www.jfklibrary.org/archives/other-resources/john-f-kennedy-speeches/pittsburgh-pa-19470603 but actually a quote about Jefferson by Charles A. Beard in 1936. https://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/widespread-poverty-and-concentrated-wealth-spurious-quotation
Misattributed

Democracy , Wealth

“Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.”

Thomas Jefferson

1800s, First Inaugural Address (1801)

History , Question , Angels

“Every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists.”

Thomas Jefferson

1800s, First Inaugural Address (1801)

“Let those flatter who fear; it is not an American art. To give praise which is not due might be well from the venal, but would ill beseem those who are asserting the rights of human nature. They know, and will therefore say, that kings are the servants, not the proprietors of the people.”

Thomas Jefferson

1770s, A Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774)

People , Fear , Art , Nature

“Compulsion in religion is distinguished peculiarly from compulsion in every other thing. I may grow rich by art I am compelled to follow, I may recover health by medicines I am compelled to take against my own judgment, but I cannot be saved by a worship I disbelieve & abhor.”

Thomas Jefferson

Notes on Religion (October 1776), published in The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes http://oll.libertyfund.org/ToC/0054.php, Federal Edition, Paul Leicester Ford, ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, Vol. 2 http://oll.libertyfund.org/Texts/Jefferson0136/Works/0054-02_Bk.pdf, p. 266
1770s

Religion , Health , Art

“Our cause is just. Our union is perfect. Our internal resources are great, and, if necessary, foreign assistance is undoubtedly attainable.”

Thomas Jefferson

We gratefully acknowledge, as signal instances of the Divine favour towards us, that his Providence would not permit us to be called into this severe controversy, until we were grown up to our present strength, had been previously exercised in warlike operation, and possessed of the means of defending ourselves. With hearts fortified with these animating reflections, we most solemnly, before God and the world, declare that, exerting the utmost energy of those powers, which our beneficent Creator hath graciously bestowed upon us, the arms we have been compelled by our enemies to assume, we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverence, employ for the preservation of our liberties; being with one mind resolved to die freemen rather than to live slaves.
Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms (1775); Jefferson composed the first draft of this document, but the final work was done by John Dickinson, working with his original draft. Full text online http://www.nationalcenter.org/1775DeclarationofArms.html
1770s

Perfection