Thomas Jefferson

The greatest good we can do our country is to heal its wounds and restore it to a sound and healthy state.

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.

The way to have good and safe government, is not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to every one exactly the functions he is competent to.

I am for encouraging the diffusion of knowledge among the people. The people are the only safe depositories of government.

I find that the love of power is insatiable and uncontrollable.

I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just.

The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.

The earth belongs to the living, not the dead.

I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.

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

I advance it therefore as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind.

The commerce of slaves in the West Indies, I am informed, is an open market of human flesh, where the unhappy victims are daily exposed to the highest bidder, and where the most sacred ties of nature are torn asunder by the avarice of their unfeeling masters.

This unfortunate difference of color, and perhaps of faculty, is a powerful obstacle to the emancipation of these people.

Nothing is so disgusting to our manners and morals as the practice of gambling, and of horse-racing, which is a species of gambling.

I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever; that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events; that it may become probable by supernatural interference! The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest.

Educate and inform the whole mass of the people. Enable them to see that it is to their interest to preserve peace and order, and they will preserve them. And it requires no very high degree of education to convince them of this. They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.

The mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.

God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive.

The operations of the executive power are generally for the public good, and when they are not, they are generally checked by the Legislature.

Were I to enter on a newspaper, it should be to give the public generally a choice of all the productions of the human mind, which have been published.