"If you have to eat crow, eat it while it's young and tender."
Read quote
3 likes
Quote collection
Thomas Jefferson quotes (page 86 of 91)
1.8K quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"When a uniform exercise of kindness to prisoners on our part has been returned by as uniform severity on the part of our enemies,you must excuse me for saying it is high time, by other lessons, to teach respect to the dictates of humanity; in such a case, retaliation becomes an act of benevolence."
Read quote
3 likes
"While old men feel sensibly enough their own advance in years, they do not sufficiently recollect it in those whom they have seenyoung."
Read quote
3 likes
"If your letters are as long as the bible, they will appear short to me. Only let them be brim full of affection."
Read quote
3 likes
"Do not write me studied letters but ramble as you please."
Read quote
3 likes
"The cutting of heads is become so much a la mode, that one is apt to feel of a morning whether their own is on their shoulders."
Read quote
3 likes
"Our business is to have great credit and to use it little."
Read quote
3 likes
"Congress has scarcely any thing to employ them, and complain that the place [Washington, D.C.] is remarkably dull."
Read quote
3 likes
"When we consider how much climate contributes to the happiness of our condition, by the fine sensation it excites, and the productions it is the parent of, we have reason to value highly the accident of birth in such a one as that of Virginia."
Read quote
3 likes
"When tempted to do any thing in secret, ask yourself if you would do it in public."
Read quote
3 likes
"If you are obliged to neglect any thing, let it be your chemistry. It is the least useful and the least amusing to a country gentleman of all the ordinary branches of science."
Read quote
3 likes
"The application requisite to the duties of the office I hold [governor of Virginia] is so excessive, and the execution of them after all so imperfect, that I have determined to retire from it at the close of the present campaign."
Read quote
3 likes
"You see I am an enthusiast on the subject of the arts."
Read quote
3 likes
"The private buildings [of Virginia] are very rarely constructed of stone or brick; much the greatest proportion being of scantlingand boards, plastered with lime. It is impossible to devise things more ugly, uncomfortable, and happily more perishable."
Read quote
3 likes
"With respect to our State and federal governments, I do not think their relations correctly understood by foreigners. They generally suppose the former subordinate to the latter. But this is not the case. They are co-ordinate departments of one simple and integral whole."
Read quote
3 likes
"The opinions of men should not be the object of any government. Our civil rights are no more dependent on our religious beliefs than they are dependent upon our thoughts about geometry or physics!"
Read quote
3 likes
"Every experience deeply felt in life needs to be passed along. Wheather it be through words and music, chiseled in stone, painted with a brush, or sewn with a needle, it is a way of reaching for immortality."
Read quote
3 likes
"The present generation has the same right of self-government which the past one has exercised for itself."
Read quote
3 likes
"My principles, and those always received by the republicans, do not admit to removing any person from office merely for a difference of political opinion. Malversations in office, and the exerting of official influence to control the freedom of election are good causes for removal."
Read quote
3 likes
"The spirit of 1776 is not dead. It had only been slumbering. The body of the American people is substantially republican."
Read quote
3 likes