Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) was an American statesman, philosopher, and founding father. He served as the second U.S. vice president 1797–81 and the third president 1801–09. An intellectual with wide-ranging interests, from music, law, science, painting, and architecture to political philosophy and natural history, he wielded a towering influence on the political and intellectual life of the new nation.
A Democratic-Republican from Virginia, Jefferson played a significant leadership role during the American Revolution. He was the principal drafter of the 1776 Declaration of Independence. Subsequently, President George Washington persuaded Jefferson to serve as the first secretary of state (1789–93.)
While president, Jefferson finalized the Louisiana Purchase (1803) and sanctioned the Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804–06) to survey this vast territory. He was re-elected to a second term, but his poor handling of U.S. shipping and maritime policy made a third term impossible.
After retiring from political office, Jefferson lived in his Monticello estate in Virginia. He was also famously well-read and a great lover of books; the federal government purchased his magnificent personal book collection (6,487 volumes on history, philosophy, and fine arts) after the War of 1812 to form the core of the Library of Congress.
Jefferson was responsible for the chartering of the University of Virginia in 1819. He designed the campus and its buildings and served as the first rector of the university.
Jefferson also wrote numerous pieces of legislation, reports, observations, correspondences, essays, and even books on farming and gardening.
Jefferson died on July 4, 1826, few hours before his rival and friend John Adams died on the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. In his epitaph, composed during the last months of his life, Jefferson codified his legacy: “Author of the Declaration of Independence and of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, and Father of the University of Virginia.”
Jefferson’s legacy is tainted by his ownership of slaves to support his lavish lifestyle, even if he opposed slavery in principle. He fathered at least one child with a slave.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Thomas Jefferson
If once the people become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors, shall all become wolves.
—Thomas Jefferson
Topics: Attitude
The happiest moments my heart knows are those in which it is pouring forth its affections to a few esteemed characters.
—Thomas Jefferson
Topics: Affection
[A] lawyer without books would be like a workman without tools.
—Thomas Jefferson
Topics: Lawyers
The most valuable of all talents is never using two words when one will do.
—Thomas Jefferson
Topics: Meeting, Brevity, Talent, Words
I am mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, the sale of a book can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too.
—Thomas Jefferson
Topics: Censorship
At the establishment of our constitutions, the judiciary bodies were supposed to be the most helpless and harmless members of the government. Experience, however, soon showed in what way they were to become the most dangerous; that the insufficiency of the means provided for their removal gave them a freehold and irresponsibility in office; that their decisions, seeming to concern individual suitors only, pass silent and unheeded by the public at large; that these decisions, nevertheless, become law by precedent, sapping, by little and little, the foundations of the constitution, and working its change by construction, before any one has perceived that that invisible and helpless worm has been busily employed in consuming its substance. In truth, man is not made to be trusted for life, if secured against all liability to account.
—Thomas Jefferson
Were I to commence my administration again, the first question I would ask respecting a candidate would be, Does he use ardent spirits?
—Thomas Jefferson
The majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society
—Thomas Jefferson
Topics: Government
On the dogmas of religion, as distinguished from moral principles, all mankind, from the beginning of the world to this day, have been quarreling, fighting, burning and torturing one another, for abstractions unintelligible to themselves and to all others, and absolutely beyond the comprehension of the human mind.
—Thomas Jefferson
Topics: Religion
If there be one principle more deeply rooted than any other in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest.
—Thomas Jefferson
Topics: War
Never fear the want of business. A man who qualifies himself well for his calling, never fails of employment.
—Thomas Jefferson
Topics: Work
To preserve the freedom of the human mind and freedom of the press, every spirit should be ready to devote itself to martyrdom; for as long as we may think as we will, and speak as we think the condition of man will proceed in improvement. The generation which is going off the stage has deserved well of mankind for the struggles it has made, and for having arrested the course of despotism which had overwhelmed the world for thousands and thousands of years. If there seems to be danger that the ground they have gained will be lost again, that danger comes from the generation your contemporary. But that the enthusiasm which characterizes youth should lift its parricide hands against freedom and science would be such a monstrous phenomenon as I cannot place among possible things in this age and country.
—Thomas Jefferson
We sometimes from dreams pick up some hint worth improving by … reflection.
—Thomas Jefferson
Topics: Bravery, Dreams
The earth belongs to the living, not to the dead.
—Thomas Jefferson
Topics: Earth
The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite.
—Thomas Jefferson
Topics: Government
The judiciary of the United States is the subtle corps of sappers and miners constantly working under ground to undermine the foundations of our confederated fabric. A judiciary independent of a king or executive alone, is a good thing; but independence of the will of the nation is a solecism, at least in a republican government.
—Thomas Jefferson
How much have cost us the evils that never happened!
—Thomas Jefferson
Topics: Anxiety
A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public debt…If the game runs sometime against us at home, we must have patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at stake
—Thomas Jefferson
Topics: Government
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 a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.
—Thomas Jefferson
Topics: Science, Miscellaneous, Fight, Revolution, Medicine
I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground that ‘all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states or to the people.’ To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power not longer susceptible of any definition
—Thomas Jefferson
Topics: Government
In the fevered state of our country, no good can ever result from any attempt to set one of these fiery zealots to rights, either in fact or principle. They are determined as to the facts they will believe, and the opinions on which they will act. Get by them, therefore, as you would by an angry bull; it is not for a man of sense to dispute the road with such an animal.
—Thomas Jefferson
Topics: Fanaticism
I find the pain of a little censure, even when it is unfounded, is more acute than the pleasure of much praise.
—Thomas Jefferson
Topics: Criticism, Censorship
If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.
—Thomas Jefferson
Topics: Opinion, Opinions, Reason
For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead…
—Thomas Jefferson
Topics: Truth, Thought, Reason
There is…an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents…. The artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient in government, and provisions should be made to prevent its ascendancy.
—Thomas Jefferson
Topics: Aristocracy
The policy of the American government is to leave their citizens free, neither restraining nor aiding them in their pursuits.
—Thomas Jefferson
Topics: America
Man is fed with fables through life, and leaves it in the belief he knows something of what has been passing, when in truth he knows nothing but what has passed under his own eyes.
—Thomas Jefferson
Topics: Knowledge
I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led, and bearding every authority which stood in their way.
—Thomas Jefferson
Topics: Authority
I never told my own religion nor scrutinized that of another. I never attempted to make a convert, nor wished to change another’s creed. I am satisfied that yours must be an excellent religion to have produced a life of such exemplary virtue and correctness. For it is in our lives, not from our words, that our religion must be judged.
—Thomas Jefferson
Topics: Religion
I 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. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.
—Thomas Jefferson
Topics: Government
Educate and inform the whole mass of the people… They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.
—Thomas Jefferson
Topics: Liberty, People
The germ of dissolution of our federal government is in the constitution of the federal judiciary; an irresponsible body, working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little to-day and a little to-morrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped from the States, and the government of all be consolidated into one.
—Thomas Jefferson
I have not observed men’s honesty to increase with their riches.
—Thomas Jefferson
Topics: Money
The maxim of buying nothing without the money in our pocket to pay for it, would make of our country one of the happiest upon earth. Experience during the war proved this; as I think every man will remember that under all the privations it obliged him to submit to during that period he slept sounder, and awaked happier than he can do now. Desperate of finding relief from a free course of justice, I look forward to the abolition of all credit as the only other remedy which can take place.
—Thomas Jefferson
My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.
—Thomas Jefferson
Topics: Society, Government
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.
—Thomas Jefferson
When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated
—Thomas Jefferson
Topics: Government
Leave no authority existing not responsible to the people.
—Thomas Jefferson
Topics: One liners, Authority
Happiness is not being pained in body or troubled in mind.
—Thomas Jefferson
Topics: Blessings, Happiness
An elective despotism was not the government we fought for, but one which should not only be founded on true free principles, but in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among general bodies of magistracy, as that no one could transcend their legal limits without being effectually checked and restrained by the others
—Thomas Jefferson
Topics: Government
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