Quotes from Thomas Jefferson

Traveling makes a man wiser, but less happy.

The merchant has no country.

Agriculture, manufacturers, commerce, and navigation, the four pillars of our prosperity, are then most thriving when left most free to individual enterprise.

Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens.

The greatest service which can be rendered any country is to add a useful plant to its culture.

Money and not morality is the principle of commerce and commercial nations.

As the term of my relief from this place [Washington, D.C.] approaches, it's drudgery becomes more nauseating and intolerable, and my impatience to be with you at Monticello increases daily.

Freedom of religion, freedom of the press, 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

Freedom of the person under the protection of habeas corpus. I deem one of the essential principles of our government.

The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus by the Supreme Being in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.

A republican government is slow to move, yet when once in motion, its momentum becomes irresistible.

Governments are republican only in proportion as they employ the will of the people and execute it.

The end of democracy and the defeat of the American Revolution will occur when government falls into the hands of lending institutions and moneyed incorporations.

The purpose of government is to enable the people of a nation to live in safety and happiness. Government exists for the interests of the governed, not for the governors.

Religious institutions that use government power in support of themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths, or of no faith, undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of an established religion tends to make the clergy unresponsive to their own people, and leads to corruption within religion itself. Erecting the 'wall of separation between church and state,' therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society.

But this momentous question [the Missouri Compromise], like a firebell in the night awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it the knell of the Union.

Let what will be said or done, preserve your sangfroid immovably, and to every obstacle, oppose patience, perseverance, and soothing language.

The cement of this union is the heart-blood of every American.

Idleness begets ennui, ennui the hypochondriac, and that a diseased body. No laborious person was ever yet hysterical.

Who then can so softly bind up the wound of another as he who has felt the same wound himself.

I own that I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.

Experience has shown, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.

A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.