Character Quotes by Thomas Jefferson

What is it men cannot be made to believe!

— Thomas Jefferson

Money, not morality, is the principle commerce of civilized nations.

— Thomas Jefferson

Without virtue, happiness cannot be.

— Thomas Jefferson

“A Man's management of his own purse speaks volumes about character”

— Thomas Jefferson

It is part of the American character to consider nothing as desperate.

— Thomas Jefferson

Material abundance without character is the surest way to destruction.

— Thomas Jefferson

Money, not morality, constitutes the principle of commercial nations.

— Thomas Jefferson

The moral sense is the first excellence of well-organized man.

— Thomas Jefferson

Health, learning and virtue will ensure your happiness; they will give you a quiet conscience, private esteem and public honour.

— Thomas Jefferson

Self-interest, or rather self-love, or egoism, has been more plausibly substituted as the basis of morality.

— Thomas Jefferson

Honesty and interest are as intimately connected in the public as in the private code of morality.

— Thomas Jefferson

Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.

— Thomas Jefferson

Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the…

— Thomas Jefferson

Money, not morality, is the principle of commerce and commercial nations.

— Thomas Jefferson

Error is to be pitied and pardoned: it is the weakness of human nature. But vice is a foul blemish, not pardonable…

— Thomas Jefferson

When wrongs are pressed because it is believed they will be borne, resistance becomes morality.

— Thomas Jefferson

The moral sense, or conscience, is as much part of a man as his leg or arm. It is given to all…

— Thomas Jefferson

Laws ... proportionate and mild should never be dispensed with. Let mercy be the character of the law-giver, but let the judge…

— Thomas Jefferson

State a moral case to a plowman and a professor. The former will decide it as well, and often better than the…

— Thomas Jefferson

in the spring he will attend your botanical course. his natural turn is very strongly to the objects of your two courses…

— Thomas Jefferson

Self-love . . . is the sole antagonist of virtue, leading us constantly by our propensities to self-gratification in violation of our…

— Thomas Jefferson

I believe that justice is instinct and innate; the moral sense is as much a part of our constitution as the threat…

— Thomas Jefferson

The moral sense, or conscience, is as much a part of man as his leg or arm. It is given to all…

— Thomas Jefferson

Nothing but good can result from an exchange of information and opinions between those whose circumstances and morals admit no doubt of…

— Thomas Jefferson

When virtue is banished, ambition invades the minds of those who are disposed to receive it, and avarice possesses the whole community.…

— Thomas Jefferson

He who made us would have been a pitiful bungler, if he had made the rules of our moral conduct a matter…

— Thomas Jefferson

The monopoly of a single bank is certainly an evil. The multiplication of them was intended to cure it; but it multiplied…

— Thomas Jefferson

Give up money, give up fame, give up science, give the earth itself and all it contains rather than do an immoral…

— Thomas Jefferson

The steady character of our countrymen is a rock to which we may safely moor; and notwithstanding the efforts of the papers…

— Thomas Jefferson

Reading, reflection and time have convinced me that the interests of society require the observation of those moral precepts only in which…

— Thomas Jefferson

To instruct the mass of our citizens in these, their rights, interests and duties, as men and citizens...this brings us to the…

— Thomas Jefferson

A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise…

— Thomas Jefferson

“The object most interesting to me for the residue of my life, will be to see you both developing daily those principles…

— Thomas Jefferson

The functionaries of public power rarely strengthen in their dispositions to abridge it, and an unorganized call for timely amendment is not…

— Thomas Jefferson

I do believe that General Washington had not a firm confidence in the durability of our government. He was naturally distrustful of…

— Thomas Jefferson

“Whereas it appeareth that however certain forms of government are better calculated than others to protect individuals in the free exercise of…

— Thomas Jefferson

Health is the requisite after morality

— Thomas Jefferson

The moral sense is as much a part of our constitution as that of feeling, seeing, or hearing.

— Thomas Jefferson

A nation, as a society, forms a moral person, and every member of it is personally responsible for his society.

— Thomas Jefferson

Sensibility of mind is indeed the parent of every virtue, but it is the parent of much misery, too.

— Thomas Jefferson