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.

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

Money, not morality, is the principle commerce of civilized nations.

Never spend your money before you have earned it.

There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents.

I have no ambition to govern men it is a painful and thankless office.

An association of men who will not quarrel with one another is a thing which has never yet existed, from the greatest confederacy of nations down to a town meeting or a vestry.

As our enemies have found we can reason like men, so now let us show them we can fight like men also.

Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.

Politics is such a torment that I advise everyone I love not to mix with it.

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.

I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led, and bearding every authority which stood in their way.

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

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

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

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.

One loves to possess arms, though they hope never to have occasion for them.

I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be.

Happiness is not being pained in body or troubled in mind.

It is neither wealth nor splendor but tranquility and occupation which give you happiness.