"It takes time to persuade men to do even what is for
their own good."
"Leave all the afternoon for exercise and recreation,
which are as necessary as reading. I will rather say more necessary because
health is worth more than learning."
"Leave no authority existing not responsible to the people."
"Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are
sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they
are accustomed."
"Money, not morality, is the principle commerce of civilized
nations."
"My only fear is that I may live too long. This would
be a subject of dread to me."
"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."
"Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today."
"A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species
of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the
body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games
played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the
body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be your
constant companion of your walks."
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of
good conscience to remain silent."
"All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that
though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to
be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights,
which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression."
"Always take hold of things by the smooth handle."
"As our enemies have found we can reason like men, so
now let us show them we can fight like men also."
"Be polite to all, but intimate with few."
"Bodily decay is gloomy in prospect, but of all human
contemplations the most abhorrent is body without mind."
"Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long
as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere
consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional
men, setting out in life, it is their only capital."
"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."
"Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should
be our motto."
"Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent
with our government. I believe that every human mind feels pleasure in
doing good to another."
"Never spend your money before you have earned it."
"No duty the Executive had to perform was so trying as
to put the right man in the right place."
"No freeman shall be debarred the use of arms."
"No man will ever carry out of the Presidency the reputation
which carried him into it."
"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of
our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government
to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country."
"I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of
the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened
enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy
is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion."
"I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past."
Written by Thomas Jefferson
