President Thomas Jefferson on WhiteHouse.gov

Monticello

“A bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular, and what no just government should to rest on inference.”

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

“Delay is preferable to error.”

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

“Every citizen should be a soldier.  This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state.”

"He who knows nothing is nearer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors."                                                                     

“He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world's believing him.”

“Health is worth more than learning.”

—From “Letter to His Cousin John Garland Jefferson”

“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.  Already they have raised up a moneyed aristocracy that has set the Government at defiance.  The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs.”

“I have sworn upon the altar of Almighty God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”

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

“Never trouble another for what you can do for yourself.”

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

“The happiness and prosperity of our citizens is the only legitimate object of government.”

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

“[The People] are the ultimate, guardians of their own liberty.”

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

“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.”

—From “Declaration of Independence”

“When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, an hundred.”

“Where a new invention promises to be useful, it ought to be tried.”

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