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Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson
Whenever you do a thing, act as if all the world were watching.
The happiest moments my heart knows are those in which it is pouring forth its affections to a few esteemed characters.
Health, learning and virtue will ensure your happiness; they will give you a quiet conscience, private esteem and public honour.
It is a great importance to set a resolution, not to be shaken, never to tell an untruth. There is no vice so mean, so pitiful, so contemptible and he who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual, he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world's believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions.
It seems the harder I work, the more luck I have.
Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.
Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.
Work is either fun or drudgery. It depends on your attitude. I like fun.
A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.
A politician looks forward only to the next election. A statesman looks forward to the next generation.
I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.
A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public debt...If the game runs sometime against us at home, we must have patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at stake.
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.
The flames kindled on the Fourth of July, 1776, have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism; on the contrary, they will consume these engines and all who work them.
...a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.
The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object.
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 blind-folded fear.
When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, a hundred.
I never believed there was one code of morality for a public and another for a private man.
Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none.