Thomas Jefferson, Gentleman Scholar
Do you want to know who you are? Don’t ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.
Honesty is the first chapter of the book wisdom
It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
I’m a greater believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.
The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.
I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.
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.
I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.
In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.
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.
The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.
When angry, count to ten before you speak. If very angry, count to one hundred.
I believe that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another.
I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.
Never spend your money before you have earned it.
To penetrate and dissipate these clouds of darkness, the general mind must be strengthened by education.
Only aim to do your duty, and mankind will give you credit where you fail.
Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy, and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it.
Do not bite at the bait of pleasure, till you know there is no hook beneath it.
Errors of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.
