Quotes from Thomas Jefferson

I think it is a great error to consider a heavy tax on wines as a tax on luxury. On the contrary, it is a tax on the health of our citizens.

The sovereign invigorator of the body is exercise, and of all the exercises walking is the best.

Health is the requisite after morality

Travelling is good for your health and necessary for your amusement.

Health is value greater than studying.

The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases.

One never really knows how much one has been touched by a place until one has left it.

History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government.

Blest is that nation whose silent course of happiness furnishes nothing for history to say.

History teaches the young the virtues of freedom. By apprising them of the past it will enable them to judge the future.

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.-Thomas Jefferson

I believe the states can best govern our home concerns, and the general government our foreign ones.

The physician is happy in the attachment of the families in which he practices. All think he has saved one of them, and he finds himself everywhere a welcome guest, a home in every house.

Let common sense and common honesty have fair play, and they will soon set things to rights.

This I hope will be the age of experiments in government, and that their basis will be founded in principles of honesty, not of mere force.

What is it men cannot be made to believe!

Honesty is the first chapter of the book wisdom.

The protection of our citizens, the spirit and honor of our country, require that force should be interposed to a certain degree.

I hope the terms of Excellency, Honor, Worship, Esquire, forever disappear from among us... I wish that of Mr. would follow them.

The greatest honor of a man is in doing good to his fellow men, not in destroying them.

I consider him [Alexander von Humboldt] the most important scientist whom I have met.

I hope we shall . . . crush in [its] birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations.

My theory has always been, that if we are to dream, the flatteries of hope are as cheap, and pleasanter, than the gloom of despair.

I will not believe our labors are lost. I shall not die without a hope that light and liberty are on a steady advance.