Thomas Jefferson Quotes About Energy

• I suppose, indeed, that in public life, a man whose political principles have any decided character and who has energy enough to give them effect must always expect to encounter political hostility from those of adverse principles.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Character, Men, Giving

  Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies: From the Papers of Thomas Jefferson”, p.109

• And say, finally, whether peace is best preserved by giving energy to the government or information to the people. This last is the most legitimate engine of government. Educate and inform the whole mass of people. Enable them to see that it is their interest to preserve peace and order, and they will preserve them. And it requires no very high degree of education to convince them of this. They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Government, Order, People

  Thomas Jefferson, John Dewey (2008). “The Essential Jefferson”, p.45, Courier Corporation

• We do, then, most solemnly before God and the world declare that regardless of every consequence, at the risk of every distress, the arms we have been compelled to assume we will use with perseverance, exerting to their utmost energies all those powers which our Creator hath given us to preserve that liberty which he committed to us in sacred deposit and to protect from every hostile hand our lives and our properties.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Perseverance, Hands, Risk

  Thomas Jefferson, Andrew M. Allison (1983). “The Real Thomas Jefferson”, Natl Center for Constitutional

• Men of energy of character must have enemies; because there are two sides to every question, and taking one with decision, and acting on it with effect, those who take the other will of course be hostile in proportion as they feel that effect.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Character, Men, Two Sides

  Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoir, correspondence, and miscellanies from the papers of T. Jefferson”

• They are nations of eternal war. All their energies are expended in the destruction of the labor, property, and lives of their people.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Peace, War, People

  Thomas Jefferson (1861). “Correspondence. Reports and opinions while secretarry of state”, p.288

• Having labored faithfully in establishing the right of self-government, we see in the rising generation, into whose hands it is passing, that purity of principle and energy of character which will protect and preserve it through their day, and deliver it over to their sons as they receive it from their fathers.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Father, Character, Son

  Thomas Jefferson, Richard Holland Johnston, Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association of the United States “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson”

• Where strictness of grammar does not weaken expression, it should be attended to. . . . But where, by small grammatical negligences, the energy of an idea is condensed, or a word stands for a sentence, I hold grammatical rigor in contempt.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Writing, Expression, Ideas

  Thomas Jefferson (2010). “The Works of Thomas Jefferson: 1799-1803”, p.321, Cosimo, Inc.

• Would the honest patriot, in the full tide of successful experiment, abandon a government which has so far kept us free and firm on the theoretic and visionary fear that this Government, the world's best hope, may by possibility want energy to preserve itself? I trust not.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Successful, Government, Energy

  First Inaugural Address, 4 March 1801

• How soon the labor of men would make a paradise of the earth were it not for misgovernment and a diversion of his energies to selfish interests.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Selfish, Men, Energy

You May Also Like:

John Adams

George Washington

James Madison

Benjamin Franklin

Alexander Hamilton

Abraham Lincoln

Thomas Paine