Quotes by Thomas Jefferson

Walking is the best possible exercise. Habituate yourself to walk very far.

We confide in our strength, without boasting of it; we respect that of others, without fearing it.

We in America do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate.

I have the consolation of having added nothing to my private fortune during my public service, and of retiring with hands clean as they are empty.
(letter to Count Diodati, 1807)

No government ought to be without censors & where the press is free, no one ever will.
(letter to George Washington, September 9, 1792)

Health is worth more than learning.
(letter to his cousin John Garland Jefferson, June 11, 1790)

If our house be on fire, without inquiring whether it was fired from within or without, we must try to extinguish it.
(letter to James Lewis, Jr., May 9, 1798)

An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens.
(letter to John Melish, January 13, 1813)

Advertisements... contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.
(Letter to Nathaniel Macon, January 12, 1819)

I read no newspaper now but Ritchie's, and in that chiefly the advertisements, for they contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.
(Letter to Nathaniel Macon, January 12, 1819)

I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.
(Letter to the Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin ,1802)

Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched.
(Resolutions, 1803)

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.
(to Archibald Stuart, 1791)