Thomas Jefferson
» Age and Aging » “My only fear is that I may live too long. This would be a subject of dread to me.”
» Alliances » “Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none.”
» Anger » “When angry, count to ten before you speak. If very angry, count to one hundred.”
» Argument » “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.”
» Attitude » “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.”
» Bankers and Banking » “Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies.”
» Bankers and Banking » “I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.”
» Books and Reading » “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.”
» Books and Reading » “I cannot live without books.”
» Brevity » “The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.”
» Business » “The selfish spirit of commerce, which knows no country, and feels no passion or principle but that of gain.”
» Censure » “I find the pain of a little censure, even when it is unfounded, is more acute than the pleasure of much praise.”
» Character » “It is part of the American character to consider nothing as desperate — to surmount every difficulty by resolution and contrivance.”
» Citizenship » “A strict observance of the written laws is doubtless one of the high virtues of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation.”
» Citizenship » “A strict observance of the written laws is doubtless one of the high virtues of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation.”
» Conquest » “If there be one principle more deeply rooted than any other in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest.”
» Control » “Nothing gives a person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.”
» Coward and Cowardice » “A coward is much more exposed to quarrels than a man of spirit.”
» Debt » “The world is indebted for all triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression.”
» Dreams » “I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.”
» Economy and Economics » “Never spend your money before you have earned it.”
» Education » “Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.”
» Equality » “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
