Virtue Quotes by Thomas Jefferson

What is it men cannot be made to believe!

— Thomas Jefferson

Without virtue, happiness cannot be.

— Thomas Jefferson

The reason that Christianity is the best friend of government is because Christianity is the only religion that changes the heart.

— Thomas Jefferson

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

— Thomas Jefferson

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

— Thomas Jefferson

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

— Thomas Jefferson

Liberty is the great parent of science and of virtue; and a nation will be great in both in proportion as it…

— Thomas Jefferson

My confidence is that there will for a long time be virtue and good sense enough in our countrymen to correct abuses.

— Thomas Jefferson

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

— Thomas Jefferson

The order of nature [is] that individual happiness shall be inseparable from the practice of virtue.

— Thomas Jefferson

A cold-blooded, calculation, unprincipled, usurper, without a virtue, no statesman, knowing nothing of commerce, political economy, or civil government, and supplying ignorance…

— 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 look to the diffusion of light and education as the resource most to be relied on for ameliorating the condition, promoting…

— Thomas Jefferson

There is... an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents... The artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient…

— Thomas Jefferson

I suppose, indeed, that in public life, a man whose political principles have any decided character and who has energy enough to…

— Thomas Jefferson

I rejoice when I hear of young men of virtue and talents, worthy to receive and likely to preserve the splendid inheritance…

— Thomas Jefferson

“Perceiving the order of nature to be that individual happiness shall be inseparable from the practice of virtue, I am willing to…

— Thomas Jefferson

I view great cities as pestilential to the morals, the health and the liberties of man. True, they nourish some of the…

— 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

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

— 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

Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason,…

— Thomas Jefferson

Instead of an aristocracy of wealth, of more harm and danger than benefit to society, to make an opening for the aristocracy…

— Thomas Jefferson

I never told my own religion nor scrutinized that of another. I never attempted to make a convert, nor wished to change…

— Thomas Jefferson

No government can continue good but under the control of the people; and . . . . their minds are to be…

— Thomas Jefferson

The value of science to a republican people, the security it gives to liberty by enlightening the minds of its citizens, the…

— Thomas Jefferson

“The fantastical idea of virtue and the public good being a sufficient security to the state against the commission of crimes...was never…

— Thomas Jefferson

History teaches the young the virtues of freedom. By apprising them of the past it will enable them to judge the future.

— Thomas Jefferson

I, place economy among the first & most important republican virtues, & public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared

— Thomas Jefferson

Everything is useful which contributes to fix the principles and practices of virtue.

— Thomas Jefferson

Those who labour in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen, people, whose breasts he…

— Thomas Jefferson

If we did a good act merely from love of God and a belief that it is pleasing to Him, whence arises…

— Thomas Jefferson

If the Wise be the happy man... he must be virtuous too; for, without virtue, happiness cannot be. This then is the…

— Thomas Jefferson

In truth, politeness is artificial good humor, it covers the natural want of it, and ends by rendering habitual a substitute nearly…

— 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 fantastical idea of virtue and the public good being a sufficient security to the state against the commission of crimes, which…

— Thomas Jefferson

I place economy among the first and most important virtues and public debt as the greatest dangers to be feared. To preserve…

— Thomas Jefferson

I place economy among the first and most important virtues and public debt as the greatest dangers to be feared... We must…

— Thomas Jefferson

In truth, politeness is artificial good humor, it covers the natural want of it, and ends by rendering habitual a substitute nearly…

— Thomas Jefferson

The natural aristocracy I consider as the most precious gift of nature for the instruction, the trusts, and government of society. And…

— Thomas Jefferson