To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive.

—Thomas Jefferson

About Thomas Jefferson

Portrait of Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson (April 13 [O.S. April 2], 1743 – July 4, 1826) was a Founding Father and the third president of the United States, serving from 1801 to 1809. A prolific writer and philosopher, Jefferson was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence. His political philosophy formed the basis...

More quotations from Thomas Jefferson

You learn a lot about people when you play games with them.

—Thomas Jefferson

Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.

—Thomas Jefferson

It behoves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself, to resist invasions of it in the case of others; or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.

—Thomas Jefferson

Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.

—Thomas Jefferson

I read no newspaper now but Ritchie's, and in that chiefly the advertisements, for they contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.

—Thomas Jefferson

More quotations tagged with “freedom”

Self-reliance is the only road to true freedom, and being one's own person is its ultimate reward.

—Soren Kierkegaard

This liberty will look easy by and by when nobody dies to get it.

—Robert Louis Stevenson

It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.

—Patricia Sampson

You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.

—Maxwell Anderson

Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.

History

11 Jul 2015 Added