Will516 > Will516's Quotes

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

“Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.”
― John Stuart Mill, Inaugural Address Delivered to the University of St Andrews, 2/1/1867

“I'm a greater believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“...vast accession of strength from their younger recruits, who having nothing in them of the feelings or principles of ’76 now look to a single and splendid government of an Aristocracy, founded on banking institutions and monied in corporations under the guise and cloak of their favored branches of manufactures commerce and navigation, riding and ruling over the plundered ploughman and beggared yeomanry.”
― Thomas Jefferson, Letters of Thomas Jefferson

“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.”
― John Philpot Curran

“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
― Benjamin Franklin

“Desperate courage makes One a majority.”
― Andrew Jackson

“The equal rights of man, and the happiness of every individual, are now acknowledged to be the only legitimate objects of government.”
― Thomas Jefferson, Letters of Thomas Jefferson

“Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and Father of the University of Virginia.

[Epitaph, upon his instructions to erect a 'a plain die or cube ... surmounted by an Obelisk' with 'the following inscription, and not a word more…because by these, as testimonials that I have lived, I wish most to be remembered.' It omits that he had been President of the United States, a position of political power and prestige, and celebrates his involvement in the creation of the means of inspiration and instruction by which many human lives have been liberated from oppression and ignorance]”
― Thomas Jefferson

“Never put off for tomorrow, what you can do today.”
― Aaron Burr

“All should be laid open to you without reserve, for there is not a truth existing which I fear, or would wish unknown to the whole world.”
― Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson: Writings

“It is an axiom in my mind, that our liberty can never be safe but in the hands of the people themselves, and that too of the people with a certain degree of instruction. This it is the business of the State to effect, and on a general plan.”
― Thomas Jefferson, Letters of Thomas Jefferson

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

“Always take hold of things by the smooth handle.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“Man once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind. With such persons, gullibility, which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason, and the mind becomes a wreck.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“The greatest service which can be rendered any country is to add a useful plant to its culture.

--The Fruit Hunters”
― Thomas Jefferson, The Quotable Jefferson

“He who knows best knows how little he knows.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“never trust a man who won't accept that there is more than one way to spell a word

Paraphrased”
― Thomas Jefferson

“While the art of printing is left to us science can never be retrograde; what is once acquired of real knowledge can never be lost.”
― Thomas Jefferson, Letters of Thomas Jefferson

“There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me.”
― thomas jefferson

“What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man! Who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment and death itself in vindication of his own liberty, and the next moment . . . inflict on his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose.”
― Thomas Jefferson, Letters of Thomas Jefferson

“No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, no culture comparable to that of the garden...But though an old man, I am but a young gardener.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“The object most interesting to me for the residue of my life, will be to see you both developing daily those principles of virtue and goodness which will make you valuable to others and happy in yourselves, and acquiring those talents and that degree of science which will guard you at all times against ennui, the most dangerous poison of life. A mind always employed is always happy. This is the true secret, the grand recipe for felicity....In a world which furnishes so many employments which are useful, and so many which are amusing, it is our own fault if we ever know what ennui is...”
― Thomas Jefferson

“The most fortunate of us, in our journey through life, frequently meet with calamities and misfortunes which may greatly afflict us; and, to fortify our minds against the attacks of these calamities and misfortunes should be one of the principal studies and endeavors of our lives. The only method of doing this is to assume a perfect resignation to the Divine will, to consider that whatever does happen, must happen; and that, by our uneasiness, we cannot prevent the blow before it does fall, but we may add to its force after it has fallen. These considerations, and others such as these, may enable us in some measure to surmount the difficulties thrown in our way; to bear up with a tolerable degree of patience under the burden of life; and to proceed with a pious and unshaken resignation, till we arrive at our journey's end.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“Do not weep. Do not wax indignant. Understand.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“I would warn you that I do not attribute to nature either beauty or deformity, order or confusion. Only in relation to our imagination can things be called beautiful or ugly, well-ordered or confused.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“Pride is pleasure arising from a man's thinking too highly of himself.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“Peace is not the absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition of benevolence, confidence, justice.”
― Baruch Spinoza

“Hatred is increased by being reciprocated, and can on the other hand be destroyed by love. Hatred which is completely vanquished by love, passes into love; and love is thereupon greater, than id hatred had not preceded it. ”
― Benedictus de Spinoza