Thomas Jefferson on Leadership Quotes

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

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

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

"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."

"It is the trade of a physician to accompany the fortune of his patient to the last, as it is of a politician to that of his country."

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

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

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

"Delay is preferable to error."

"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."

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

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

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

"The price of liberty is eternal vigilance."

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

"No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free, no one ever will."

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

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

"Never spend your money before you have it."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"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."

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

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

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

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

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

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