80+ Thomas Jefferson Quotes About Success That Will Motivate You

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

It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing.

I’m a greater believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.

Everything yields to diligence.

Every day is lost in which we do not learn something useful. Man has no nobler or more valuable possession than time.

Never put off to tomorrow what you can do today.

Take care of your cents: dollars will take care of themselves.

It takes time to persuade men to do even what is for their own good.

We never repent of having eaten too little.

One travels more usefully when alone, because he reflects more.

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

When angry, count to ten before you speak. If very angry, count to one hundred.

Delay is preferable to error.

If I am to meet with a disappointment, the sooner I know it, the more of life I shall have to wear it off.

Dispositions of the mind, like limbs of the body, acquire strength by exercise.

The most successful war seldom pays for its losses.

A coward is much more exposed to quarrels than a man of spirit.

We confide in our strength, without boasting of it, we respect that of others, without fearing it.

Nothing is troublesome that we do willingly.

How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened.

My theory has always been, that if we are to dream, the flatteries of hope are as cheap, and pleasanter, than the gloom of despair.

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

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

Bodily decay is gloomy in prospect, but of all human contemplations the most abhorrent is body without mind.

Of all machines, the human heart is the most complicated and inexplicable.

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

A great deal of love given to a few is better than a little to many.

Every human being must be viewed according to what it is good for. For not one of us is perfect.

Pride costs us more than hunger, thirst, and cold.

Do not bite at the bait of pleasure, till you know there is no hook beneath it.

Whenever you do a thing, act as if all the world were watching.

One man with courage is a majority.

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

An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens.

Power is not alluring to pure minds.

Only aim to do your duty, and mankind will give you credit where you fail.

Be polite to all, but intimate with few.

I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us that the less we use our power the greater it will be.

Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.

He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it the second time.

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

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

It is always better to have no ideas than false ones; to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong.

He who knows best knows how little he knows.

Follow truth wherever it may lead you.

The opinions and beliefs of men follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to their minds.

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.

Educate and inform the whole mass of the people. They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.

Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.

Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.

No people who are ignorant can be truly free.

Every citizen should be a soldier. This was the case with the Greeks and Romans, and must be that of every free state.

Errors of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.

I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing.

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

I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led.

To penetrate and dissipate these clouds of darkness, the general mind must be strengthened by education.

Man is an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all education in him. From his cradle to his grave he is learning to do what he sees others do.

I cannot live without books.

The moment a person forms a theory, his imagination sees in every object only the traits which favor that theory.

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

I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it.

Never spend your money before you have earned it.

Never buy a thing you do not want because it is cheap. It will be dear to you.

Never trouble another for what you can do for yourself.

Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.

There is nothing more unequal than the equal treatment of unequal people.

Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.

Nobody is better than you, and remember, you are better than nobody.

I think with the Romans, that the general of today should be a soldier tomorrow if necessary.

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

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 in all just pursuits.

Happiness is not being pained in body or troubled in mind.

I find that he is happiest of whom the world says least, good or bad.

The happiest moments of my life have been the few which I have passed at home in the bosom of my family.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Whether I retire to bed early or late, I rise with the sun.

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

The object of walking is to relax the mind. You should therefore not permit yourself even to think while you walk. But divert your attention by the objects surrounding you.

Leave all the afternoon for exercise and recreation, which are as necessary as reading. I will rather say more necessary because health is worth more than learning.

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

Don’t talk about what you have done or what you are going to do.

I am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greek and Roman leave to us.

Wisdom I know is social. She seeks her fellows. But Beauty is jealous, and illy bears the presence of a rival.