Thomas Jefferson on Leadership Quotes

"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."

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

"How much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened!"

"I steer my bark with Hope in the head, leaving Fear astern."

"The man who is of no party is the most useful to the public."

"Never spend your money before you have it."

"The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government."

"Do you want to know who you are? Don't ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you."

"The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do."

"Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed us, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom."

"Bigotry is the disease of ignorance, of morbid minds; enthusiasm of the free and buoyant."

"A little rebellion now and then is a good thing."

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

"It is neither wealth nor splendor, but tranquility and occupation which give you happiness."

"I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past."

"Every day is lost on which we do not learn something useful."

"Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any."

"Laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind."

"Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations... entangling alliances with none."

"Whenever you are to do a thing, though it can never be known but to yourself, ask yourself how you would act were all the world looking at you, and act accordingly."

"Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances."

"Great innovations should not be forced on slender majorities."

"Walking is the best possible exercise. Habituate yourself to walk very far."

"The glow of one warm thought is to me worth more than money."

"In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock."

"The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers."

"Delay is preferable to error."

"Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong."

"I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master."

"The price of liberty is eternal vigilance."

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."

"Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom."

"Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, perverted it into tyranny."