The Thomas Jefferson quotes recorded throughout history provide us with priceless wisdom still today. Thomas Jefferson was born on April 13th of 1743 and no one could have known how important the words would be that this child would speak. This month we celebrate his birth with these 17 famous Thomas Jefferson quotes:



1. "It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world."

2. "An injured friend is the bitterest of foes."

3. "Be polite to all, but intimate with few."

4. "No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of the garden."

5. "It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself."

6. "A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine."

7. "The Creator has not thought proper to mark those in the forehead who are of stuff to make good generals. We are first, therefore, to seek them blindfold, and then let them learn the trade at the expense of great losses."

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

9. "We may consider each generation as a distinct nation, with a right, by the will of its majority, to bind themselves, but none to bind the succeeding generation, more than the inhabitants of another country."

10. "Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe."

11. "Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter."

12. "War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses."

13. "Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question."

14. "Only aim to do your duty, and mankind will give you credit where you fail."

15. "I'm a great believer in luck and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it."

16. "I am mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, the sale of a book can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too."

17. "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."

Let these wise Thomas Jefferson quotes not only remind us of what this wonderful nation was built upon, but that trials of today are not so very different from the trials of our past.