Morality Quotes by Thomas Jefferson

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

— Thomas Jefferson

Health is the requisite after morality

— Thomas Jefferson

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

— Thomas Jefferson

Everyone must act according to the dictates of his own reason.

— Thomas Jefferson

Independence can be trusted nowhere but with the people in mass. They are inherently independent of all but moral law.

— Thomas Jefferson

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

— Thomas Jefferson

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

— Thomas Jefferson

Was the government to prescribe to us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are…

— Thomas Jefferson

With nations as with individuals our interests soundly calculated will ever be found inseparable from our moral duties.

— Thomas Jefferson

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

— 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

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

— Thomas Jefferson

“Self-love is no part of morality. Indeed it is exactly its counterpart. It is the sole antagonist of virtue leading us constantly…

— Thomas Jefferson

Is it less dishonest to do what is wrong because it is not expressly prohibited by written law? Let us hope our…

— Thomas Jefferson

Morals were too essential to the happiness of man, to be risked on the uncertain combinations of the head. Nature laid their…

— Thomas Jefferson

“Even in Europe a change has sensibly taken place in the mind of man. Science has liberated the ideas of those who…

— 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

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

— Thomas Jefferson

Taste cannot be controlled by law. We must resist at all costs any attempt to regulate our individual freedoms and to legislate…

— 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

All the capital employed in paper speculation is barren and useless, producing, like that on a gaming table, no accession to itself,…

— Thomas Jefferson

The opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction; that to suffer the civil magistrate to…

— Thomas Jefferson

Man was destined for society. His morality, therefore, was to be formed to this object. He was endowed with a sense of…

— 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

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

— Thomas Jefferson

Well aware that the opinions and belief of men depend not on their own will, but follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to…

— Thomas Jefferson

Almighty God hath created the mind free. All attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens...are a departure from the plan…

— Thomas Jefferson

Among the sayings and discourses imputed to him (i.e. Jesus) by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality,…

— Thomas Jefferson

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

— Thomas Jefferson

Certainly one of the highest duties of the citizen is a scrupulous obedience to the laws of the nation. But it is…

— Thomas Jefferson

Truth is certainly a branch of morality and a very important one to society.

— Thomas Jefferson

His system of morality was the most benevolent and sublime probably that has been ever taught, and consequently more perfect than those…

— Thomas Jefferson

I never did, or countenanced, in public life, a single act inconsistent with the strictest good faith; having never believed there was…

— Thomas Jefferson

If we suffer ourselves to be frightened from our post by mere lying, surely the enemy will use that weapon; for what…

— Thomas Jefferson

Of all the systems of morality, ancient or modern which have come under my observation, none appears to me so pure as…

— Thomas Jefferson

It is strangely absurd to suppose that a million of human beings, collected together, are not under the same moral laws which…

— Thomas Jefferson

I consider the doctrines of Jesus as delivered by himself to contain the outlines of the sublimest system of morality that has…

— Thomas Jefferson

Religion, morality, and knowledge are necessary for good government... Therefore schools and the means of educating the people should always be encouraged.

— Thomas Jefferson

When we come to the moral principles on which the government is to be administered, we come to what is proper for…

— Thomas Jefferson