If the present Congress errs in too much talking,
by Thomas Jefferson

If the present Congress errs in too much talking,
how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people
send one hundred and fifty lawyers,
whose trade it is to question everything,
yield nothing, and talk by the hour?
- Thomas Jefferson

Related topics: Government Political

Do you want to know who you are?
Don't ask. Act!
Action will delineate and define you.
- Thomas Jefferson

I find that the harder I work,
the more luck I seem to have.
- Thomas Jefferson

I believe that every human mind feels pleasure
in doing good to another.
- Thomas Jefferson

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Thank you for joining me on this journey we call life,
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

He who knows nothing is closer to the truth
than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.
- Thomas Jefferson

He who knows best knows how little he knows.
- Thomas Jefferson

Determine never to be idle.
No person will have occasion to complain
of the want of time who never loses any.
It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing.
- Thomas Jefferson

Power is not alluring to pure minds.
- Thomas Jefferson

Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life
in which chance has placed us,
but is always the result of a good conscience,
good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits.
- Thomas Jefferson

Truth is certainly a branch of morality
and a very important one to society.
- Thomas Jefferson

We never repent of having eaten too little.
- Thomas Jefferson

How much pain they have cost us,
the evils which have never happened.
- Thomas Jefferson

Whenever you do a thing,
act as if all the world were watching.
- Thomas Jefferson

We are not afraid to follow truth
wherever it may lead,
nor to tolerate any error
so long as reason is left free to combat it.
- Thomas Jefferson

It is always better to have no ideas than false ones;
to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong.
- Thomas Jefferson

In matters of style, swim with the current;
in matters of principle, stand like a rock.
- Thomas Jefferson

When angry, count to ten before you speak.
If very angry, count to one hundred.
- Thomas Jefferson

I never considered a difference of opinion
in politics, in religion, in philosophy,
as cause for withdrawing from a friend.
- Thomas Jefferson

Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another
as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.
- Thomas Jefferson

Only aim to do your duty,
and mankind will give you credit where you fail.
- Thomas Jefferson

Nothing can stop the man with the right
mental attitude from achieving his goal;
nothing on earth can help the man
with the wrong mental attitude.
- Thomas Jefferson

Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.
- Thomas Jefferson
(also attributed to Benjamin Franklin and Lord Chesterfield)

I am a great believer in luck
and I find that the harder
I work the more I have of it.
- Thomas Jefferson

I find that he is happiest
of whom the world says least, good or bad.
- Thomas Jefferson

The moment a person forms a theory,
his imagination sees in every object
only the traits which favor that theory.
- Thomas Jefferson

It is neither wealth nor splendor;
but tranquility and occupation which give you happiness.
- Thomas Jefferson

An injured friend is the bitterest of foes.
- Thomas Jefferson

The glow of one warm thought
is to me worth more than money.
- Thomas Jefferson

The happiest moments my heart knows are those in which
it is pouring forth its affections to a few esteemed characters.
- Thomas Jefferson

The earth belongs to the living, not to the dead.
- Thomas Jefferson

Wisdom I know is social.
She seeks her fellows.
But Beauty is jealous,
and illy bears the presence of a rival.
- Thomas Jefferson

There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me.
- Thomas Jefferson

Speeches that are measured by the hour
will die with the hour.
- Thomas Jefferson

Bodily decay is gloomy in prospect,
but of all human contemplations,
the most abhorrent is body without mind.
- Thomas Jefferson

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold
is for people of good conscience to remain silent.
- Thomas Jefferson

Educate and inform the whole mass of the people ...
They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.
- Thomas Jefferson

The good opinion of mankind,
like the lever of Archimedes,
with the given fulcrum, moves the world.
- Thomas Jefferson

It does me no injury for my neighbor to say
there are twenty gods or no God.
- Thomas Jefferson

It is in our lives and not our words
that our religion must be read.
- Thomas Jefferson

Happiness is not being pained in body, or troubled in mind.
- Thomas Jefferson

Walking is the best possible exercise.
Habituate yourself to walk very fast.
- Thomas Jefferson

Fix reason firmly in her seat,
and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion.
Question with boldness even the existence of a God;
because, if there be one,
he must more approve of the homage of reason,
than that of blindfolded fear.
- Thomas Jefferson

It takes time to persuade men to do even
what is for their own good.
- Thomas Jefferson

No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth,
and no culture comparable to that of the garden.
- Thomas Jefferson

Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations;
entangling alliances with none.
- Thomas Jefferson

Don't talk about what you have done
or what you are going to do.
- Thomas Jefferson

I abhor war and view it as the greatest scourge of mankind.
- Thomas Jefferson

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time
with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
- Thomas Jefferson

I cannot live without books.
- Thomas Jefferson

I have no fear that the result of our experiment
will be that men may be trusted to
govern themselves without a master.
- Thomas Jefferson

Every citizen should be a soldier.
This was the case with the Greeks and Romans,
and must be that of every free state.
- Thomas Jefferson

My only fear is that I may live too long.
This would be a subject of dread to me.
- Thomas Jefferson

I have seen enough of one war never to wish to see another.
- Thomas Jefferson

We hold these truths to be self-evident:
that all men are created equal;
that they are endowed by their Creator
with certain unalienable rights;
that among these are life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness.
- Thomas Jefferson

Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices,
a rottenness begins in his conduct.
- Thomas Jefferson

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free,
in a state of civilization,
it expects what never was and never will be.
- Thomas Jefferson

The spirit of resistance to government
is so valuable on certain occasions
that I wish it to be always kept alive.
- Thomas Jefferson

The whole commerce between master and slave
is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions,
the most unremitting despotism on the one part,
and degrading submissions on the other.
Our children see this, and learn to imitate it.
- Thomas Jefferson

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.
- Thomas Jefferson (from a letter to George Logan, Nov. 12th, 1816)

A democracy is nothing more than mob rule,
where fifty-one percent of the people
may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.
- attributed to Thomas Jefferson

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

A wise and frugal government,
which shall leave men free to regulate
their own pursuits of industry and improvement,
and shall not take from the mouth
of labor and the bread it has earned -
this is the sum of good government.
- Thomas Jefferson

Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies.
- Thomas Jefferson

Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy,
and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it.
- Thomas Jefferson

No government ought to be without censors;
and where the press is free no one ever will.
- Thomas Jefferson

It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself,
to resist invasions of it in the case of others:
or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.
- Thomas Jefferson

Where the press is free and every man
is able to read, all is safe.
- Thomas Jefferson

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government
results from too much government.
- Thomas Jefferson

There is not a truth existing which I fear...
or would wish unknown to the whole world.
- Thomas Jefferson

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.
- Thomas Jefferson

It is more dangerous that even
a guilty person should be punished
without the forms of law
than that he should escape.
- Thomas Jefferson

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May the world be kind to you, and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie