Thomas Jefferson Quotes About Human Nature

• I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Humility, Exercise, Power

  Thomas Jefferson (1977). “The Portable Thomas Jefferson”, p.416, Penguin

• It is strangely absurd to suppose that a million of human beings, collected together, are not under the same moral laws which bind each of them separately.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Rights, Law, Together

  Thomas Jefferson (2010). “The Works of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence and Papers, 1816-1826”, p.43, Cosimo, Inc.

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

  Thomas Jefferson

  Integrity, Responsibility, Hypocrisy

  Thomas Jefferson (2004). “Light and Liberty: Reflections on the Pursuit of Happiness”, p.66, Modern Library

• I believe that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Happiness, Peace, Laughter

  Thomas Jefferson, Joyce Appleby, Terence Ball (1999). “Jefferson: Political Writings”, p.296, Cambridge University Press

• Let those flatter, who fear: it is not an American art. To give praise where it is not due, might be well from the venal, but would ill beseem those who are asserting the rights of human nature.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Art, Rights, Giving

  Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoirs, Correspondence, and Private Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Late President of the United States”, p.118

• He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it’s most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the christian king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce...

  Thomas Jefferson

  Christian, Kings, War

  Thomas Jefferson’s “original Rough draught” of the Declaration of Independence, founders.archives.gov. June 11 – July 4, 1776.

• New York, like London, seems to be a cloacina [toilet] of all the depravities of human nature.

  Thomas Jefferson

  New York, Toilets, London

• Now I will avow, that I then believed and now believe that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God; and that those principles of liberty are as unalterable as human nature and our terrestrial, mundane system.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Believe, Liberty, Principles

  Thomas Jefferson (1861). “Correspondence”, p.152

• The sentiments of men are known not only by what they receive, but what they reject also.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Ambition, Men, Human Nature

  Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoirs, Correspondence and Private Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Late President of the United States”, p.16

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

  Thomas Jefferson

  Character, Errors, Weakness

  Thomas Jefferson (1950). “The papers of Thomas Jefferson”

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